Whitney Houston passed away yesterday, at the age of 48. I was immediately saddened when I heard the news. Whitney had such a voice, such a spirit, and it was heartbreaking to see her drug-fueled decline. When I was younger I heard about famous artists who fell into addiction, but by that time it was so much a part of their story (and unfortunately so), that the tragedy didn’t register. Even as an adult, other popular artists have ultimately fallen prey to their addictions, but there was never an artist that I liked so much, whose success I was really pulling for, like Whitney Houston.
In the Nas song “I Can” he wrote the following lyric:
I met a woman who’s becoming a star
She was very beautiful, leaving people in awe
Singing songs, Lena Horne, but the younger version
Hung with the wrong person
Got her strung on that
Heroin, cocaine, sniffin up drugs all in her nose…
Coulda died, so young, now looks ugly and old
No fun cause now when she reaches for hugs people hold they breath
Cause she smells of corrosion and death
I always wondered if he was talking about Whitney Houston, because that’s who I envisioned those words to be about. As long as she was alive there was hope for redemption, but now her life has become a tragic, cautionary tale. At least she left behind beautiful music, so we can still remember her at her best.
What's your opinion?