Did Whitney and Bobby really have something in common?
Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown met at the Soul Train Awards in 1989. On July 18, 1992 they got married at her Mendham Estate in New Jersey. The middle class and churchgoing goodgirly had locked destiny with the rough on the edge, street bad boy from the bricks. Shortly before that wedding, both had recorded a song “We have something in common” for the Bobby album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBuC3xOrU4k
The song introduced the world to their romantic affiliation which had been kept secret for good reasons. Their engagement which took place while she was filming The Bodyguard alongside Kevin Costner in 1991 was known only to few friends and family. Nippy was the reigning singing sensation at the time with stellar songs to boot, who had captured world attention for her vocal supremacy and effortless delivery wrapped in an overdose of panache and smoothness.
Bobby, on the other hand, was a tour de force in his own right. Between the late 80s and early 90s, he was the man that could not be ignored. Not after his mesmerizing sophomore album Don’t Be Cruel which served as the launchpad for the New Jack Swing era. He was a cultural and style icon in his own right. As a young girl in Calabar, Nigeria, I remember walking past barbershops which adorned posters of Bobby Brown with his Gumby haircut marked by a high angle cut which he revealed was originally an accident that occured because he looked away while the barber cut his hair. That mistake would be imitated by millions of young men in many barbershops across the world, a statement to Brown’s star quality.
Unsurprisingly, Whitney the star would connect with Bobby another star, and the outcome was sparks, chemistry and romance. The Leonine Whitney and Aquarian Bobby became a match made in pop culture heaven and Hollywood’s favourite couple in the 90s. They would become tabloid fodder for the gossip machine in the later parts of that decade and into the new millennium. The peachy skin Whitney with the pristine vocals made in holy heaven would slowly deteriorate before our eyes with incessant drug entanglements.
Her career would suffer severe setbacks as a dishevelled appearance and cancelled appearances became her normative modus operandi. When she appeared at MJ’s 30th year anniversary looking shockingly scrawny and malnourished, yours truly knew that the end was approaching and it was just a matter of time. And when “the Voice” became voiceless like the average mortal, it was apparent that no money could be made and that soon the maxim that “artists are worth more dead than alive” would be enacted. We, lovers of music all know how it went.
Meanwhile, before we arrived at this trajectory, Whitney and BB’s romance would fade. It has been said that she spent those number of years with the latter because she needed to prove to naysayers that her marriage could work. That marriage did not survive due to her starpower. Male ego and male jealousy was the bane of its existence. In my view, had both had something in common, no powers in the heaven or earth could have torn them apart. Generally, men of all races and creed find successful and confident women a threat to their masculine existence. A woman needs to be downtrodden for a typical man to feel like the king on the throne. This is the shameless, dehumanizing and retrogressive creation of patriarchal thought.
I would conclude with the submission of iconic music journalist Danyel Smith in her seminal work Shine Bright. She argues that they both had commonalities and differences. In her words, “Brown and Houston had in common the culturally performative aspects of talk shows and other kinds of white-framed media. They had in common the stage itself, and the livid mockery of fans and critics when one gets too famous, or when one is just not as hot as one once was. With regard to cultural ompact and genius-level talent, Whitney, even in death, remains superior to her ex-husband” (202).
In essence, they had talent and performative arts in common and that was as far as it went. But the degree of relevance, accomplishment and personality became the mark of distinction between the two. “Bobby was a pop and R&B star, but he and Whitney do not have in common legendary accomplishment or status. He is not an icon……Deep inside, he knows this. It can’t have been easy to deal with- lust for and competition with and love for and enviousness of one’s partner- but people deal with it. Women of all stations deal with it all the time” (202).
Whitney would admit to Oprah in 2009 that she downplayed her success and fame, in order not to be perceived as threatening by her ex-husband. She said, “I’m Mrs. Brown, don’t call me Houston” Enough said!
