Ten years after her death, a new book details Whitney Houston’s inner torment over being gay — and her secret love affair with Robyn Crawford.
Whitney Houston was the perfect face for the MTV-dominated 1980s, “a glamorous showgirl shaped by a Svengali” – the powerful Arista Records producer Clive Davis.
Houston was at the top of her game in 2009 — but behind the scenes she was battling multiple demons.The Drinkards played the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” performing at black venues throughout the South. Cissy was a star in her own right — singing backup to the King himself, Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.
“Cissy knew Whitney was destined for greatness and she could get her there. She rode her hard at church and encouraged her little girl to sing along to the records she and Aretha made. She didn’t take no shit,” Kennedy writes. Whitney’s cousin, chart topping R&B singer Dionne Warwick, also helped encourage the young girl’s vocal talent, viewed as the family’s ticket out of poverty.“It was a bond that formed almost immediately, and they were inseparable that summer. If you saw one, you saw the other,” writes Kennedy.
Robyn Crawford and Houston at a function in 1988. Their constant closeness set tongues wagging, but Houston never came out of the closet.“We were friends. We were lovers. We were everything to each other. We weren’t falling in love. We just were. We were one: that’s how it felt,” Robyn wrote in her book.
With her 1985 debut single, Whitney Houston was “on fire out the gate.” Her first album soared to No. 1 in 1987 and by the early 1990s, she had 10 No. 1 singles. When the Washington Post asked the singer about the nature of her friendship with Robyn, she snapped, “She is now my employee but we’re still the best of friends.”
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