Source: WENN

Yesterday the late Whitney Houston’s sister-in-law, Pat Houston sent family members into panic-mode after she posted a message to her Facebook that seemed a bit suicidal, which eventually led to the authorities being called to her Georgia home, reports TMZ.

“Sometimes you just feel like giving up on life and its many challenges. And for the first time in my life…I’m tired…and I want to finally rest. I love you guys,” is the message Pat posted to her Facebook page that initially got the attention of her family members.

A source says the family grew fearful that Pat was contemplating taking her life and  immediately began calling her and sending text messages to her cell phone. When Pat didn’t respond, several family members rushed to her home where they found her passed out in her bed with a bottle of pills not too far away. Frightened by the scene, her family called 911.

The source says that Pat woke up as soon as cops arrived on the scene and expressed that she had just taken pain medicine for her back and turned her phone off so that she could get some rest. The insider says Pat suggests that this was all a misunderstanding and that her Facebook post was not a suicide note, just a result of stress and an effort to let off some steam. Authorities say as a precaution, Pat was taken to the hospital and was released not long after.

We’re sure that this was a frightening experience, as the Houston family suffered the loss of Whitney a little over a year ago. We’re glad Pat is okay. Something about this story seems a tad suspect though.

Thoughts?

Derrick Salters/WENN.com

From ESSENCE

Clive Davis’ 2012 Pre-Grammy Party will always be remembered as the event where the world lost a legend. Whitney Houston was found dead in her hotel room in the same venue where the party was to take place just a few hours later. This year, Cissy Houston says there’s no way she’d be able to attend Davis’ annual bash.

The music mogul extended a personal invitation for Houston to attend his affair, to which Houston politely declined.

“I got an invitation to the party, which is the most obscene thing. I don’t know why they would want me to come to the party in which she died, you know? Unheard of,” Houston told Access Hollywood. “I guess maybe he just sent me a copy for remembrance sake.”

Ms. Cissy is a classy woman but holds no punches. You know who did accept the invitation? Gary and Pat Houston. For more check out ESSENCE.

Do you think Clive Davis was just trying to be courteous and respectful by sending them invitations to his annual party?

Source: WENN

From BlackVoices

Most people would give their right arm to snag a coveted invitation to Clive Davis’ Grammy party — but not Cissy Houston.

The mother of the late Whitney Houston, who died last year on the night of Davis’ shindig, expressed offense at having been invited to the record executive’s annual celebration, calling the invitation “unheard of.”

“I got an invitation to the party, which is the most obscene thing,” Houston, 79, told “Access Hollywood” on Thursday. “I don’t know why they would want me to come to the party in which she died, you know? … I guess maybe he just sent me a copy for remembrance sake.”

Check out the full story and why Pat and Gary Houston will be attending the party on BlackVoices.com.

D. Salters/WENN.com

For all the jokes everyone had about Cissy Houston “keeping it real” during her interview with Oprah on last week’s episode of Next Chapter, it seems one thing is absolutely true: she and granddaughter Bobbi Kristina  are not on the best of terms.

Last Thursday, Bobbi Kristina responded to Cissy’s comments about her having heard that BK didn’t like the idea of her writing the book but not having had the chance to speak to her directly. She took to Twitter:

Twitter

For those of you who aren’t well-versed in the abbreviated text of teenagers these days (as well as all of the added symbols from Twitter), Bobbi Kristina basically said that neither she nor her boyfriend Nick Gordon (yes, apparently they’re still together) had anything to do with the book and she will not be reading it. Further, it seems that she feels that putting out the book was disrespectful to her mom, Whitney Houston.

The unfortunate truth is that this is a family in shambles. There’s no way to know if they were in this bad of shape prior to Whitney’s death but with the reality show, book deals and interviews, it has certainly pulled them further apart.

Cissy recently did an interview with the Tom Joyner Morning Show to promote her book and according to Black America Web, when asked what she would say to Bobbi Kristina if she were listening, she replied, “Call your grandmother.”

Do you think if the Houstons pulled back from media outlets, they could have a chance to mourn and possibly come back together as a family?

In case you haven’t noticed, which I’m sure you have, lip-synching is all anyone cares about these days. And now because Beyonce “fooled” everyone during the inauguration, journalists are going to dig into every lip-synching controversy ever to find out did they or didn’t they — starting with Whitney Houston.

Since Cissy is on the interview trail right now after her candid interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired Monday night, OMG Insider took the opportunity to ask Whitney’s mother about her daughter’s famous performance of the “Star Spangled Banner” during Super Bowl XXV in 1991.  Cissy told Kevin Frazier:

“She killed it. I was so proud of her and I wasn’t there. I had broken my ankle and I couldn’t go.”

When the reporter then asked Cissy about the Super Bowl affiliates wanting Whitney to lip-sync, she said:

“She wouldn’t do it. She said, ‘I want to sing it’ and she sang it.  She sang it! Yeah. I was real proud of her. Always been proud of her.”

As we all know by now, that’s not what the story has been all these years. In 2004, Jimmy Jam told Seattle PI nonchalantly ”I thought everybody knew that everybody lip-synched” and specifically said of Whitney:

“Whitney, when she did the national anthem, which was the greatest national anthem that we ever heard, what we heard over the air was prerecorded. The reason it was prerecorded was, that was a moment that no one wanted any mistakes. They didn’t want any feedback, they didn’t want any technical difficulties … and it was great.”

Honestly, at this point, Whitney Houston is gone and this performance was 22 years ago. Her rendition of the National Anthem, whether live or not, is still one of the greatest to ever be done, and if it weren’t for Beyonce’s wanna-be scandal no one would even care. And sorry to say, but Cissy is not the most reliable source. What kind of mother would she be to not defend her daughter’s legacy, much like she’s done when questions of her drug use have risen. We just need to leave it alone and stick to what Jimmy Jam said : everybody lip-syncs.

Source: WENN

From TMZ

Whitney Houston’s brother says HE’S to blame for introducing the singer to drugs like crack coke back in the ’80s … not Bobby Brown … and last night he came clean to Oprah.

Michael Houston sat down with his mother Cissy and spilled his guts to Her Royal O-ness on “Oprah’s Next Chapter” … admitting he was the first person who did drugs with Whitney.

Read more at TMZ.com.

Credit: Shutterstock

From Black Voices

Oprah has scored a host of big interviews. Along with her epic interviews with the Kardashian family and infamous bad girl Rihanna, she also managed to get a monumental admission out of embattled cyclist Lance Armstrong and even spoke to rapper LL Cool J about his childhood abuse.

Now the media mogul has lined up another exclusive interview for her show “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” with Whitney Houston’s mother Cissy Houston. Nearly a year after her daughter’s death, the superstar’s mother opens up about raising Whitney, her drug use and relationships.

Read more at BlackVoices.com.

It has been almost a year since Whitney Houston tragically passed away. A death that shocked everyone because its timing (the night before the Grammy Awards), because it was so sudden and because of the manner in which she left this earth. Since then, her family has tried to move forward, sometimes in ways some people aren’t too fond of (remember The Houstons: On Our Own?), but they couldn’t go forward as a family without Cissy Houston, the matriarch of the clan. She speaks in depth about her daughter’s life, the feelings she has about her death and what she wishes she could have done to prevent it in her new memoir, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, & the Night the Music Stopped. A lot of what she had to say will definitely get people talking, and a lot of what she said in an interview with People to promote the book will probably do the same. We have her thoughts from both.

When asked about her feelings about Bobby Brown and the part that he played in Whitney’s downfall, she makes it clear that she was relieved that Whitney finally rid herself of him when they divorced (“She finally got rid of him, but it was too late”). But in both the book and her interview with People, she says that she doesn’t blame Bobby for her daughter’s drug use. He just so happened to not be the best husband for her. “I blame him for the way he treated her, but I don’t blame him for her drug problems…He didn’t help her, that’s for damn sure. He was no help to her at all.”

At one point in the book, Houston touches on how volatile their relationship was, and how she once went to their home in Atlanta and found an unforgettable scene:

The things I saw sent a chill right through me. Somebody had been spraypainting the walls, painting big glaring eyes and strange faces. They were evil eyes, staring at you like a threat. And there was a big framed photo of Nippy, Bobby and Krissi – but someone had cut Nippy’s head right out of it.

Speaking of unhealthy relationships–real and alleged–Mama Houston also touched on her daughter’s connection with former assistant Robyn Crawford. The two women had to battle rumors that their relationship was more than professional, and to this day, Cissy knows nothing about any truth to those rumors. Robyn did care about Whitney, seeing as how Cissy says Crawford was the first to alert her of Whitney’s growing drug use in the ’80s, but she was another person Cissy didn’t approve of in Whitney’s life (because Robyn was into drugs as well). “I just didn’t want her with my daughter. I know nothing about a romantic relationship. That’s what everybody said but they didn’t know either.”

But a big aspect of the book is the introspective look Cissy takes of herself. “Was I a good mother? ‘I still wonder if I could have saved her somehow. But there’s no book written on how to be a parent. You do the best you can.” And she speaks on the two things that she’ll never seem to be able to get over. One, is the fact that Whitney died alone, and in such conditions as she did, and that Whitney could never come to her about the small things that sent her on a downward spiral:

She’s put on her chirpy little-girl voice, and to my ears she sounded all right. If there’s any one thing I regret about our relationship, that’s it: for whatever reason, she never could talk to me about anything that upset her, unless she was really in trouble. And that’s something I’ll never get over.

But in the end, what Cissy hopes people will take away from the novel is that Whitney was a truly good person, no matter what trials and tribulations she went through. “I want people to know the truth about her, how she really was.”

Source: WENN

Though Madame Noire isn’t too sold on the concept of Lifetime’s newest reality show following Whitney Houston’s family, plenty of other people are, as evidenced by the ratings for the show’s premiere episodes.

According to The Examiner, “The premiere of the Houston family series, ‘The Houstons: On Our Own,’ was strong for Lifetime Wednesday.” The Futon Critic puts the 9pm debut at 1.333 million viewers and the second episode at 9:30pm came in just under that with 1.313 views. I’m assuming either some people didn’t realize there were two back-to-back half-hour episodes or a couple hundred thousand people decided not to keep watching the train wreck that is the Houston family.

The show immediately came under criticism as being exploitative of Whitney Houston’s death and her daughter, Bobbi Kristina’s, obvious struggle to cope. But the leading voice of the family, Pat Houston, shut those accusations down about this show coming too soon after the singer’s passing, saying:

“I don’t know when would be the right time. When would be the right time? You don’t know. You just continue what you always do and that is try to live. Taking one day, living one day at a time. And that`s all we are doing.”

It appears some 1 million viewers agree with her. Did you catch the first two episodes of “The Houstons?” What did you think?

Bobbi Kristina and the family are just weeks away from debuting their new reality show on Lifetime, “The Houstons: On Our Own.” The show follows the family of the late, great Whitney Houston, including her daughter Bobbi Kris, of course, her boyfriend Nick Gordon, Pat Houston and her family, and the matriarch of the clan, Cissy.

Though the show was originally pegged as a series showing how the family is getting on after Whitney’s passing, from the clips that have been released it appears the focus of the show is on Bobbi and Nick’s relationship. At one point the family clearly tells Nick they never expected him to go from a Godson to a boyfriend, all of which is eclipsed by Bobbi Kristna’s shocking confession at dinner one night:

“We’re engaged.”

Rumors have circulated for months that the pair had taken that next step and this reality show appears to confirm those stories. What remains to be seen is whether their relationship will continue to tear the family apart as it is now. It also appears we’ll gain insight into Bobbi’s estranged relationship with her father, Bobby Brown, and whether she really is spiraling out of control, and “grieving the wrong way,” as her aunt Pat worries.

“The Houstons: On Our Own” is set to debut Wednesday, October 24 on Lifetime. Check out the clips below and tell us what you think. Will you tune in?

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