Robyn & Whitney

Robyn & Whitney

Whitney Houston was easily one of the most gifted singers to ever hold a microphone. With 22 American Music Awards, 16 Billboard Awards, one Emmy, six Grammys, 15 Guinness World Records, 19 NAACP Awards, 14 World Music Awards, plus dozens more awards and accolades, Houston secured a place in American pop music history.

Houston was born into a family of gifted singers. Her mother was Emily “Cissy” Houston, founder of the 1960s R&B group, The Sweet Inspirations. They sang backup for stars like Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, and Elvis Presley. And Whitney’s first cousin is six-time Grammy Award-winning soul singer, Dionne Warwick. When the longtime record producer and music executive, Clive Davis, “discovered” Houston, she and her brother were singing background for one of Cissy’s acts. Whitney stepped forward and sang two songs. Davis was “stunned” by Whitney’s beauty and “that voice,” he said in the documentary about his career, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of our Lives (2017). She sang two songs. When she sang the second one, “The Greatest Love of All,” Davis said he called up the song’s co-writer, Michael Masser, and told him to take a redeye flight “to hear your song sung like nobody has ever sung it before.”

***

Whitney Houston gave the world almost 30 years of her life. In 1982, Click Models signed her on the spot. And, in less than a decade, she rose from Cissy’s daughter and teen model to America’s pop princess. She became a wife and a mother and a top-billed actress all in the spotlight. The world watched as addiction nearly stripped away from Houston all that she had earned. And it watched her bounce back.

Behind the scenes for much of Houston’s rise to fame was her most loyal friend and more, Robyn Crawford. Described in a Time magazine article about Houston titled, “The Prom Queen of Soul” (1987) as “tall, slim and severely handsome” Crawford’s close relationship with Houston fed rumors about the late singer’s sexuality for years. As was customary for the time, Houston denied all allegations about her being a lesbian or being bisexual. In 1992 when Houston married superstar R&B singer, Bobby Brown and gave birth to their daughter, Bobbi Kristina one year later, speculations about other lovers still swirled, but a little quieter than before.

Crawford, the woman behind the suspicion, was still there. And that’s why the gossip was undeterred.

“Nippy,” as she was affectionately called by family and friends, became the world’s Whitney Houston with Crawford by her side. When they met, Crawford was on a basketball scholarship at Monmouth University. She gave it up to become Houston’s personal assistant and in many ways for as long as she could, her protector. The years following Houston’s sudden death at 48 spawned two documentaries, Whitney: Can I Be Me from filmmakers Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal and the family-sanctioned Whitney, by filmmaker Kevin MacDonald. In both, Crawford is the proverbial elephant in the room. That relationship is a part of Houston’s origin story.

Over the years, Crawford stayed mostly silent about the depth of their friendship until she penned an obituary for Houston in Esquire magazine in 2012. In that Time article, Crawford responded to rumors, simply saying that “...You can hear anything on the streets, but if you don't hear it from me, it's not true.” The next time Crawford spoke about Houston, it would be at length, in her book, A Song For You: My Life with Whitney Houston (2019). Crawford’s work isn’t an airing of salacious details. Rather, it contains intimate yet careful revelations about one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, about perhaps, her greatest love of all. In the introduction to her book, Crawford admits that the reason for breaking her silence after so long was because she’d been “frustrated” by the misrepresentation of Houston’s life and legacy. She wanted to share the Houston that she knew, their story, and her own.

Both Crawford and Houston remember fondly their first meeting in the summer of 1980. In the Whitney documentary, Houston recalls, “...here comes Robyn with this beautiful, beautiful afro. She was tall and very statuesque.” “I remember thinking I’ve known this person seems like all my life,” Houston said. In A Song For You, Crawford mentions that afro and that she’d felt good about it that day. And Houston had noticed. Houston was just shy of 17 and Crawford was a 19-year-old heading into her second year at Monmouth. Crawford was handing out camp counselor enrollment forms when, she says, “She simply stopped me in my tracks.” Whitney Elizabeth Houston, that is.

According to Crawford, the two became fast friends, and Houston proved less innocent than her angelic face shone. In speaking of Houston since her death, Crawford is intentional about describing how direct and determined Houston was. She wasn’t easily led and what she wanted to do, she did. Crawford recalls their first kiss as both sweet and tinged with anxiety for her. But Houston would dispel any concerns about her she’d given Crawford her consent. “It was totally badass,” Crawford writes. Both the friendship and the intimacy between them would deepen and go well beyond first kisses, but the last part wouldn’t last. It was the 80s and a romance like theirs couldn’t last. And they were teenagers. Perhaps it wouldn’t anyway, but fortune certainly was not on their side.

Houston cut off the physical side of things with Crawford shortly after signing a deal with Arista Records in 1983. She did it by giving Crawford a Bible, saying that the two continuing on this way would make both their futures more difficult. Despite what it was intended for, they used that Bible to inscribe goodbye love letters to each other and to solidify their bond. They used that Bible as a symbol of something that was, even if the fullness of it could never be.

In January 2019, Crawford told Jada Pinkett-Smith, host of the Red Table Talk show on Facebook Watch, that Houston made a choice and a kind of sacrifice that day. Crawford had had an early front-row seat to the magic that happened when Whitney Houston sang. Houston was born to do it, and anything that got between her and her destiny would have to be realigned. And that’s what happened. Their relationship had to shift. The physical intimacy was gone, but love, deep respect, and trust endured -- from a distance and even beyond the grave.

Crawford left the Whitney world for good in the middle of a tour in 2000. Gossip about Crawford’s relationship with Houston subsided in the 1990s, but the interest and intrigue remained after Houston’s passing. Cissy Houston wrote about it (2013) and so did Bobby Brown (2016). Crawford’s A Song for You is in some ways, the final possible say in what was, and what could have been for an American pop princess.