Whitney Houston

The singer was intimately familiar with how punishing the spotlight could be. Instead of only guiding others toward greater visibility, she worked to ensure ...

Monica recalls that Houston also instructed her to keep her notes “pure” so as to distill a song’s feeling, instead of “mixing tones and textures,” the way the younger vocalist had learned to do in church. [Waiting to Exhale](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/22/movies/film-review-4-divas-have-lots-of-fun-telling-off-mr-wrong.html),” in which she co-starred; the album featured everyone from Aretha Franklin to the R&B vocalist Faith Evans to the wunderkind Brandy — who later starred in the 1997 multicultural version of “ [Cinderella](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/31/movies/tv-weekend-the-glass-slipper-fits-with-a-90-s-conscience.html)” that Houston co-produced (she herself played the Fairy Godmother). Her last project was a 2012 remake of the 1976 Black film musical “ [Sparkle](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/movies/movie-review-sparkle-with-whitney-houston-and-jordin-sparks.html),” in which she portrayed the mother to a group of aspiring singers — fitting, given the supporting role she had been playing offscreen for nearly two decades. [Street Symphony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCNuYbNBEdA)” (1998), and to stick to the thigh-high leather boots she preferred even when she was being told to wear gowns. was killed in 1997, Houston got her out of the house. It’s nearly impossible to see how intently and compassionately she wielded that power in the post-“Bodyguard” years, given that most accounts depict that period as a blank free fall toward her death. We haven’t been able to see this in part because of the scrim of myth that treats Houston’s Blackness only as a problem for her, not as a source of pride or opportunity. In a shift signaled by the “I’m Every Woman” video, she began trading in her America’s sweetheart card in the mid-90s for that of Black culture worker, emerging not only as the Voice but as a multimedia strategist with a discerning ear for new talent. And because she was intimately aware of how punishing the spotlight could be, she did not simply guide Black women to greater visibility but tried to ensure they survived it. These ventures — the fruits of a 2019 partnership between the Whitney Houston estate and the music publishing company Primary Wave — invite us not only to look again at Houston herself but to realize that her own gaze was often turned toward other Black women. The open secret of this video is that Houston had a hand in that influence: She deliberately used her status as an icon to light up a whole network of Black female forebears and creative descendants. We now expect celebrities such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ava DuVernay and Lena Waithe to share their resources, establish record labels and production companies and engage in collaborations to demonstrate that they, in the words of Issa Rae at the 2017 Emmys, are “rooting for everybody Black” — especially other Black women.