BHM Profile #4: Whitney Houston

“Whitney if you could hear me now, you weren’t just good enough, you were great. People just don’t like you Whitney, they love you.”- Kevin Costner 

Whitney Houston (1963-2012) 

(Click here for a nice list of Ms. Houston's best performances and here for a photographic retrospective)

"Great" - that's the only word that I can use to describe Ms. Whitney Houston; she was great.

I think that I'm too young to really remember Ms. Houston's tracks or impact on the music industry. I was not even born when her first two albums came out in 1985 and 1987. During the 1990s, I was too young to really understand her music; however, I knew Whitney Houston was great and one of the best singers around. The first time that I really recognized and appreciated her music was in 1998 when she and Mariah Carey came out with "When You Believe" - a truly epic song.

Although I knew Whitney was great, I was not aware of her rich musical background; in fact, I did not know that Aretha Franklin was her godmother or Dionne Warwick was her cousin.

Another thing that I really did not realize was how the manner in which Whitney Houston really transcended a lot of barriers. First off, in contrast to a lot of black artists who emerged in the 1980s, Whitney was a pop artist and not a R&B artist. This simply choice really took a lot of courage and Ms. Houston was really a trailblazer. Next, Whitney Houston was one of the first women of color to appear on Seventeen magazine: 

Here's the third way Ms. Houston paved the way for other black artists (and the one most relevant to my generation): she was one of the first African American female artists on MTV. The music video for Whitney's "How Will I Know" (1985) was released at a time when MTV still was not playing a lot of music by black artists. This track (and its music video) paved the way for black pop artists, such as Rihanna, be both pop and R&B artists:

Finally, as much as I love Marvin Gaye's version of the National Anthem, Ms. Houston's is the best and most definitive version ever sung: 

If there's one thing that I've learned from Ms. Houston, it's this: we need to live our own lives. I admire the way in which Whitney utilized her God-given talents and defined her own path. That's a simple, yet powerful lesson to take away from a phenomenal person.

Rest In Peace Ms. Houston.