Later that evening, I called Silvia, who’d been waiting in the car, and she told me that Whitney was very upset and had cried the whole drive home.
The next day, Whitney came back to the condo and marched straight to my bedroom. The blue Bible she’d given me was in its place on my headboard. She grabbed it, ripped out the back pages on which we’d both written our messages to each other, and began tearing them into pieces. She forbade me from ever again having Joy come to the condo when I moved in, and I capitulated. She owned the place, after all.
Whitney could be possessive and jealous, but she hadn’t stood in my way when I briefly dated a male video director. When she detected a potential situation with another female backup singer, she commented, “Okay, Robyn, remember she’s a church girl.” I never thought about if I wanted to be with men or women. I was doing just fine. I could attract both.
But I thought Joy had the potential to be more than just a fling, and though I hadn’t communicated this to Nip, she was perceptive and must have sensed something different.
Though my new condo was fully furnished, I never actually moved in. I was still so emotionally connected to Whitney and committed to my work that being away from her felt odd. We both admitted we weren’t ready to live apart from each other, so after just a night or two away I agreed to stay at the house. Nip sold the condo, taking a loss of $20,000 on the sale, which meant that there was now one more thing that Cissy wouldn’t let me forget.
Thirteen
Can I Be Me?
By the end of the eighties, Whitney, Silvia, and I were a team, strategizing our roles and how best to play them. The three of us vacationed together in Antigua and at Whitney’s beautiful three-bedroom condo on Williams Island in Fort Lauderdale. Whitney still loved getting away to the beach and running into the water. While she relaxed, I took care of everything career related, with the exception of negotiating the deals.
We each found our role in our little unit, but Nip’s family was determined to cause chaos. Cissy and Gary never stopped pushing, picking, poking, elbowing, and shoving—never once looking at how hard we were working or what Whitney wanted. John still didn’t like my knowing what was going on with the money. It didn’t necessarily mean he was doing something bad, but he didn’t like it when I asked questions. I didn’t have to do much to get into trouble. One time, when I asked Mr. Houston how I’d upset him, he responded, “You’re just breathing, baby.”
Silvia had it the worst. Aunt Bae, Cissy, and Michael’s wife, Donna, looked down on Silvia, when in fact she was the one who was always there for Whitney. It was Silvia who made sure she’d eaten, rubbed her feet, bathed and massaged her in the wee hours, and held on to her jewelry and wallet, all at Whit’s request. She was the one whom Whitney asked to sign her will. Silvia was by her side, honest and loyal, through it all, a task that would become more daunting once Bobby Brown came into the picture.
Whitney first met Bobby in 1989 at the Soul Train Music Awards. She was giddy that night, bouncing around, unusually animated. She spotted her dear friends BeBe and CeCe Winans sitting a few rows away from us. Nip went over to say hello, hugging them and laughing. All the while, she kept knocking her bum into the man in the row directly in front of her.
He leaned forward slightly, adjusting himself to try to avoid contact. When that didn’t work, he turned to the side and then turned halfway around. It was Bobby Brown. Bobby tuned in while Nip, BeBe, and CeCe continued talking, oblivious. I finally said, “Nip, you keep bumping into Bobby Brown’s head.” She took notice and said with a smile, “I’m sorry, Bobby.” He was cool about it all. He introduced himself to Whitney, she introduced him to BeBe and CeCe, and it was on.
At the time, Nip was interested in Eddie Murphy—whom she’d met in LA at a photo op for “We Are the World” and had spent time with him in New Jersey—but that didn’t stop her from testing the waters with Bobby. A few hours before Bobby was supposed to swing by the hotel in Los Angeles, Whitney asked Silvia and me to come to her room. She told us that she and Bobby were going out for a bite and that he might return afterward—which meant that we should disappear or hang out together elsewhere. She also asked us to go to the pharmacy for condoms.
Off we went to the pharmacy to purchase protection for the boss. When we returned, Nippy was still in her bathrobe, listening to music, and we could smell her signature fragrance, Worth. She could never put on too much of that scent, and now it filled the room. After we made the drop, Bobby arrived. Whitney introduced him to Sil and me, and we said hello with a handshake. That was it. Silvia and I disappeared to my room and ordered a room-service dinner, complete with wine and my favorite dessert, crème brûlée with raspberries.
Early the next morning, Whitney called us and asked us to come over to her room. She was strewn across the bed, and we plopped down next to her, eager to hear how the night went.
“We had a good time,” she said. She told us he was cool and sexy, smelled really good, and treated her nicely. But he kept saying, “I can’t believe I’m with Whitney Houston!”
“I had to tell him to just call me Nippy, please,” she said. We all laughed at that one. And then she told us that she didn’t use the condoms.
Sil and I stopped laughing and looked at her as if she was nuts. “Geez, Nip,” I said. “That was dumb.” She didn’t say anything, just nodded her head in agreement. Then she said that she wasn’t going to get serious with him. I didn’t press, but that condom thing really threw me for a loop. I hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her.
Whitney’s twenty-sixth birthday was fast approaching, and she got to work planning a big celebration at her house in August 1989. A lot of folks thought it was odd that she hadn’t marked her twenty-fifth birthday instead, but she and I often talked about what we’d dubbed “Dumb 25,” which was shorthand for all the stupid things we had done just after hitting the quarter-century mark. With that logic, making it to twenty-six was the real milestone. Truthfully, she’d been touring so much that even if she’d wanted a party the year before, she wouldn’t have had the time.
Lots of people showed up in the backyard to enjoy music, food, and drinks. Eddie made an entrance with a posse of six dudes but didn’t stay longer than twenty minutes. He ventured in only as far from the threshold as was necessary, posting himself near the sliding doors that led to the kitchen, where he and Whitney spoke briefly. Of course, everyone wanted time with the birthday girl, so when she turned around from a brief exchange with another guest, Eddie was gone.
Bobby, on the other hand, came with his brother and mingled with the crowd. His sophomore solo album was burning up the charts, but he seemed relaxed and happy to be there. He looked a bit like a teenager with his Gumby cut, flashy blue outfit, and mischievous smile. Bobby stayed for the duration, drifting outside to the pool and back indoors, looking pleased when he captured Whitney’s attention.
Much to my surprise, after the party, Whitney definitely still had her eyes and heart set on Eddie; Bobby was the backup guy. She had managed in that brief encounter to invite Eddie to come back over for dinner the next week.
On the surface, I could see why she was into Eddie. In simple terms, he was Eddie Murphy and she was Whitney Houston. He was a star like her, and he was wealthy like her, and Whitney was smitten. But based on his hot-and-cold behavior, I didn’t see any indication of his thinking of her in the same way.
On the day Eddie was supposed to come to the house for dinner, I stopped by the kitchen to grab a plate to take with me, and just before leaving the house, I caught a glimpse of Whitney. She was wearing a classic black dress to the knee and low-heeled sling-backs. She was radiant and beautiful as she circled the intimate table set for two.
I was outside and could see her through the large glass windows. For a moment I thought, Boy, I wish that she was doing that for me, but she wasn’t. I knew that would never be me with her in that way. Never ever again.
And that was the last time I had a thought like that.
The next day, I asked Silvia how the dinner went. Eddie had never shown. He didn’t even call. Whitney stayed in her room for the next two days. The house was quiet. You could feel the sadness throughout. I wanted to see her and tell her, “That guy doesn’t deserve you.”
In spite of this, Whit chose to give Eddie another go. I don’t know who called whom, but next thing I knew, she was heading over to his posh house in the gated section of Englewood, New Jersey. This push-and-pull went on for months, and when Eddie’s birthday came around in April, Nip decided to surprise him by showing up at his house with a cake, wearing nothing but lingerie and a fur coat, per Aunt Bae’s advice. After she waited fifteen minutes outside his gate, one of Eddie’s boys came out and told Whitney that she couldn’t come in because Eddie was “busy.”
Nippy didn’t return home that day, or the next. When she finally did, she was a wreck, shaking and barely able to stand up. Silvia and I took her to her room, and I held her while Sil ran a bath. Whitney was crying and asking, “Why don’t they like me?” She’d been on a drug binge and hadn’t slept or eaten.
The next time we saw Eddie was on the Paramount lot, where he was filming. Once again, she was chasing Mr. Ed. I kept my distance. Then I heard Whitney shout, “Hey, Robyn! We’re going bowling. Wanna go?”
I replied, “No, thanks.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Eddie said. “You don’t like bowling?”
To which I said, “Sure, I like bowling. I just don’t want to go bowling with you.”
Silvia and I believe that Eddie did a number on Nip’s self-worth. He cracked jokes about her, made fun of her weave. He would say, “Whitney and I are just friends.” I don’t know what they were, but friends they definitely were not.
Whitney was able to speak her mind to me, but she didn’t have that same backbone with men. She lost herself in the pursuit of Eddie in spite of how he discarded her and her feelings. Whit really wanted the thing with Eddie to work, and I don’t know what he did or didn’t promise her behind closed doors. What I do know is that he gave Whitney a diamond ring that looked an awful lot like an engagement ring, but he never showed any intention of bringing her to a church.
At the same time that Whitney was dealing with disappointments in her romantic life, she was also facing challenges in her relationship with black audiences. At the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989, I heard jeers coming from the balcony when her name was announced as a nominee for Best R&B / Urban Contemporary Single by a female. Whitney had just performed, and we were standing backstage in the holding area, so we could hear what was going on in the house. “Robyn, are they booing me?” she asked. Unfortunately, this was the second year in a row that she’d been booed at this show.
She didn’t like it, of course, but contrary to popular belief, being insulted at the Soul Train Awards did not knock Whitney too hard. However, she wasn’t entirely able to dismiss those fools. It was clear that she was at a point in her career where some changes needed to be made.
I spent a lot of time talking to Tony Anderson, Arista’s vice president of R&B promotion, who confided that critics were making his job hard. Some people in black radio were feeling disrespected and as if they’d been used to build Whitney up. She wasn’t the first black artist to cross over, but the speed with which she did so and the critical response to the material on the second album made things even more difficult. Tony defended himself in an opinion piece in Billboard magazine, revealing that he routinely had to convince black radio stations to play Whitney’s music “over the objections that the record was ‘too pop’ (or worse, ‘too white’) only to see that record go on the air and invariably go to the very top of their playlists.” Tony also insisted that it was up to Whitney as an artist to define what “black” music meant.
Whitney met with Clive, and he agreed that her third studio album needed to give more than a nod to contemporary black listeners. Nip wanted to work with producer and arranger Arif Mardin. I encouraged her to follow her instincts because I believed she would finally get to make more of the music she always wanted to. But when Whitney spoke with Clive, he said Arif was dated. Arif had embraced rap and hip-hop, which he displayed on Chaka Khan’s 1984 remake of Prince’s “I Feel for You,” which won Grammys for Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal. His production of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” for the Beaches soundtrack would go on to win Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
Around Christmastime Whitney and I had gone to see Beaches, a movie about two girls who meet on their family vacations in Atlantic City and become lifelong friends. Whitney’s film agent, Nicole David, had told us that it was pretty good, and Nip and I were curious to check it out. We were interested in seeing Bette act and, more important, how her music was featured in the film.
It sounded like the perfect movie for us, and I found myself remembering the early days of loading a cooler and boom box on a luggage cart on our trips down the shore. But more than that, as adults, levelheaded Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) and feisty singer/actress C. C. Bloom (Bette Midler) reminded Nippy and me of our own bond. Through romantic relationships, breakups, and their own conflicts, the characters in Beaches always found their way back to each other, and Nippy and I assumed it would always be the same with us. While we were earlier in the lifelong journey we planned to share, the on-screen portrait of enduring female friendship allowed us to see a reflection of the kind of love we had for each other. Nippy called me the sister she never had, her best friend, her dog, her nigga. Looking back, I realize that she just wanted someone with whom she could share ideas and confidences, someone to love, trust, count on—someone who would listen and not judge. Someone who understood what it was to be a friend.
Our tissues came out when gravely ill Hillary says, “I waited for you,” as C.C. rushes to her dear friend’s bedside. After convincing the hospital to discharge her, C.C. watches Hillary embrace her daughter, who then goes off to play, leaving the two women sitting side by side watching a glorious sunset as “Wind Beneath My Wings” begins to play. The next shot is at the cemetery, where C.C. takes Hillary’s young daughter by the hand, leading her away from her mother’s graveside. Then, as the camera pans right, the screen is filled with a gray tombstone that reads “WHITNEY,” and there was no way for us to escape the fifty-foot projection. Nippy and I gasped, grabbing each other’s hands. We wept as the image hung there for what felt like an eternity. When we came home to Silvia, both still a mess, we tried to explain the story to her as we bawled. I pulled myself together long enough to call Nicole to request a VHS copy, and when we showed the film to Silvia it wrecked us again. Once we finally managed to compose ourselves, Whitney said, “If I should die, please don’t have a whole lot of flowers. You know how the smell gets to me. I want CeCe to sing ‘Don’t Cry for Me’ and celebrate my life with music.”
I had just turned twenty-eight and Whitney was twenty-five, but our sense of immortality was gone with that scene. It was unthinkable that one of us could lose the other under any scenario, and certainly not due to early death. We were making a life for ourselves, a life that grew out of a dream, first given wings by Whitney, her dedication to her craft, her faith in God, and her belief that her savior would support our flight.
After they met, Clive wrote Whitney a long letter, and she agreed to work with Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. The duo was at the forefront of new jack swing, which combined hip-hop music with R&B vocals.
In early 1990, we made a trip to Atlanta for Whitney’s first recording sessions with them, and she was totally looking forward to getting down in the studio with the R&B hit makers of LaFace Records. Whitney, Silvia, and I landed, and L.A. was there to meet us. Whitney got in the car; Silvia and I stayed behind to pick up the luggage and rental car.
L.A. had offered to put us up at his guesthouse and had
a studio on his property. When Sil and I finally made our way there, Whitney and L.A. were sitting in the house talking. All the houses in that part of Atlanta looked similar to me, with fake golf course grass and artificial stone or brick facing. But L.A.’s house felt warm, spacious, and welcoming. The garage door was raised to expose bicycles, toys, and the black Mercedes-Benz that earlier had whisked Nippy away.
The recording happened at the private studio adjacent to the house. Babyface lived just up the road in the same development in a redbrick-faced house with his then wife, who was low-key and sweet. It was time to work! “My Name Is Not Susan,” “Anymore,” and “I’m Your Baby Tonight” came out of those sessions.
Whitney and ’Face, who did most if not all of the writing and tracking of vocals, spent most of the studio time together. At one point ’Face said that “I’m Your Baby Tonight” needed a bridge, and that Nip should take a break for an hour or two so he could write it. I suggested we grab the bikes from the garage and go for a ride around the complex, and she was game. So off we went, with me leading Whitney and Silvia all the way up and down the first hill, around a bend, over a little bridge, straight, down another hill, and then along a flat stretch where we all coasted. Soon it was time for us to turn back.
Nip and I were both very competitive and often talked shit to each other. One of us got it in her head that we’d race back, and within an instant, we were off. Because I have a good sense of direction, I’d typically be in the lead, but Whitney always tried to keep up. The two hills we had sped down earlier now had to be tackled going uphill! Pedaling strenuously up the hill, she somehow managed to talk trash: “Hey, Robyn, remember when Michael asked how you could possibly dribble a basketball with your tiny arms and small hands?” As she gained ground, she added, “Well, I’m trying to figure out how you’re managing this hill with those tiny legs.” I did my best to tune her out, but my stride broke and she managed to pull ahead, crossing the finish line by a hair.
A Song for You Page 15