Skinner also claimed to be writing a Whitney Houston tell-all, The Rise and Fall of Daddy's Little Girl. An ad for the book read, "Not only are the family's most darkest activities revealed but also disclosed are situations involving Bobby Brown, Dionne Warwick, Pastor Rev. Thomas (New Hope Church), Robin Crawford (Whitney's road manager) and many others." It suggested that Houston was "truly knocking on death's door" and called an overdose "almost inevitable." Skinner's hope, according to his Web site, was that the book would get Houston the help she needed and honor "John Houston's last wish," which was "for everyone to 'please, pray for Whitney.' " (The book was never published.)
Fighting Off the Devil
Every time Whitney was down, she would turn to the Lord. Even during her final days, in Los Angeles, she spoke about God frequently, praying in a nightclub with recording artist El DeBarge, with whom she shared a struggle with addiction, and asking Reginald Dowdley, a makeup artist hired for only one day, "Sweetie, are you saved?"
In 2000, Clive Davis left Arista to launch his own label, and Whitney remained behind. "I was shut down," she told Essence magazine later, "literally shut down because I was in transition from Clive, making all these changes, and I felt like I was dangling from a string and going, 'Hey, somebody save me.' Clive was my man for all those years. Where was I going? It frightened me."
During this period, while Bobby was serving one of several jail sentences for violating his probation—he had been convicted in 1996 of drunk driving—friends urged Whitney to go to rehab, if only for the sake of her daughter. If she did, they said, perhaps Bobby would, too, when he got out. She didn't deny her drug use. She would merely listen and say, "It's not as serious as you're making it out to be. And I'm just not ready."
"Then," she later said in an interview, "God woke me up."
The call came from Perri Reid, an evangelical minister, who had been reborn after a singing career as the RB artist Pebbles. During her marriage to producer L. A. Reid, she had managed the Grammy Award-winning group TLC. When Whitney recorded with L. A. Reid in his Atlanta mansion, Pebbles met her, and they became as close as sisters. Pebbles was a bridesmaid at Whitney's wedding. After TLC declared bankruptcy and dismissed Reid in 1995, her career seemed to collapse.
Whitney invited her to stay with her in New Jersey. "Whitney was filming The Preacher's Wife with Denzel Washington at the time," Reid tells me. "She knew all of us women loved him, and she said, 'You want to come to the set today and meet Denzel?' I said no, so she knew something was wrong for real. She came home one day, burst into the guest room where I was lying in my pajamas, eating my Hot Tamales candies, not wanting to talk to anybody. She snatched the covers off of me and said, 'Come into the kitchen.' "
Whitney had staged an "ambush" to confront Reid with a group of women, including Cissy. "You're going to have to fight!," Whitney admonished her. "Don't let all the lies and what people are trying to create about you for their own selfish gains destroy you."
"She was in a rage about it," says Reid. "She went to war for me."
About seven years later Whitney called Reid, known by then as Sister Perri, whose Tuesday-night healing services in an Atlanta warehouse brought salvation and many reported miracles to her followers. "We had this bond as sisters that was so strong we could sense when something was wrong," says Reid. Whitney called her in 2002, she tells me, to say she sensed Reid was in trouble, but it was actually Whitney who was distressed, though she didn't say so. "Hey, you came up in my heart" was all she said.
"This was a good soul, misunderstood," Reid says. "This girl got on a plane and brought everybody—Bobby and Bobbi Kris, and Doogie, her dog. I thought they were going to be there a couple of days. She got to Atlanta and stayed."
"She took me under her wing," Houston later said. "I stayed in one room, and she took me through a transition of deliverance and prayer You need somebody to give you tough love, people to remind you that you are a child of God and you don't belong to the devil."
Testimony posted by a fellow congregant chronicled Whitney's presence at one service, where she "couldn't sit still … and paced." Reid, "recognizing Whitney's anxiety, asked her friend if she would bless the congregation with a song For the life of me, I can't recall the song she sang that night, but what I so vividly remember are my tears that wouldn't stop flowing," wrote the congregant. "At that moment, in this intimate space, I was able to clearly see Whitney Houston's gift. No music, no background singers, just Whitney effortlessly having a conversation with God."
The Lord had led her to Atlanta, but the Devil rode beside her, and that's where her real problems began.
'We took eight years off to raise our children and get to know each other better," Whitney told Sister 2 Sister magazine in 2004. During that period, she would occasionally perform onstage, as she did in a Las Vegas tribute to Clive Davis when he received a World Music Award for lifetime achievement. She looked and sounded so great that the audience went wild.
Then she would retreat to the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, where she hoped to live a normal and anonymous life. In addition to Bobbi Kristina, the family sometimes included three children of Bobby's from previous relationships, as well as Nick Gordon, an orphaned boy Whitney had taken in two years earlier, when he was 12. It seemed impossible, however, for the couple to stay under the radar. In 2003, they took Bobbi Kristina and 30 suitcases on a well-publicized pilgrimage to Dimona, Israel, where they were baptized in the River Jordan by the Black Hebrews, a sect of vegans led by a former Chicago bus driver, who believe they are the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel.
As Whitney and Bobby dazzled and disgusted their neighbors with their princess-and-the-frog marriage, they caught the attention of two African-American women, the filmmakers Tracey Baker-Simmons and Wanda Shelley. "We were curious about the frog," Baker-Simmons tells me of the reality show that would be called Being Bobby Brown. They wanted to take the idea directly to Brown, but he was serving time for violating his probation, so they met with his brother, Tommy, who told them, "Bobby's misunderstood." He agreed to put in a call to his brother in jail, and when Bobby heard the idea—and the mention of a licensing fee—he said yes.
As soon as the two women began filming in Atlanta, in early 2004, they encountered Whitney. "I'm his wife, and I, of course, will be in the show," she said, according to Baker-Simmons.
Once Bravo aired the series, starting in June 2005, the curtain was drawn back on Whitney and Bobby's life. In the first episode, the couple is joyously reunited after Bobby is released from a 30-day jail stay. In the next episode, Whitney accompanies her husband to court, where he is charged with striking her. As the series goes on, Whitney gradually descends into a chain-smoking, apple-martini-drinking, foulmouthed, wild-haired shrew. "Kiss my ass!" she snaps at one point, and she says repeatedly, "Hell to the no."
The 10-part series opened with an audience of one million, to blistering reviews. "Being Bobby Brown, the reality show spotlighting the RB singer whose rap sheet may be longer than his catalog, is undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television," said The Hollywood Reporter. It described the show as "the lionizing of a lowlife Not only does it reveal Brown to be even more vulgar than the tabloids suggest, but it manages at the same time to rob Houston of any last shreds of dignity."
Behind the scenes, Whitney had been using again. In March 2005, Cissy showed up at the Browns' Atlanta house with deputies and a court order granting her the power to have her daughter involuntarily committed. "If you move, Bobby, they're going to take you down," she threatened. Then she turned to her daughter and said, "I'm not losing you to Satan."
... Read the full story at http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/06/whitney-houston-death-bathtub-drugs-rehab
