Cissy Houston, gospel singer and mother to the late icon Whitney Houston, has some choice words for former son-in-law Bobby Brown her tell-all.
In her new memoir Remembering Whitney, Cissy writes that she had doubts about the pair’s relationship from the beginning. “How would you like it if he had anything to do with your daughter?” she asked in a recent interview.
Cissy also believes Whitney would have stood a better chance of recovery away from Brown.
“I do believe her life would have turned out differently,” Cissy laments in the memoir. “It would have been easier for her to get sober and stay sober. Instead she was with someone who, like her, wanted to party. To me, he never seemed to be a help to her in the way she needed.”
When Houston finally left Brown in 2007, Cissy Houston writes that she was “extremely relieved” and “thanking God so much I’m sure nobody else could get a prayer in to Him.”
Cissy says she felt the need to write the book to show the best of her daughter, so that her memory and legacy isn’t entirely shrouded by drug addiction and the manner of her death.
To coincide with the book’s release, Cissy and her oldest son Michael appeared with Oprah Winfrey last night for an installment of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” on OWN. The interview, taped at Cissy’s palatial New Jersey penthouse, contained a shocking confession from Whitney’s older brother.
In the interview, Michael makes a shocking admission–that he was the first person to give Whitney cocaine in the late 1980s. Michael attempted to explain the behavior, saying “You gotta understand at the time, no one knew, it was acceptable.”
Winfrey, ever the spitfire journalist, retorted “acceptable to whom,” getting her second groundbreaking drug confession in less than a month.
Having battled drug addiction himself, Michael says giving his little sister her first line is a source of guilt he will carry the rest of his life. “I feel responsible,” he said solemnly to Winfrey.
Remembering Whitney hits bookstores, kindles, and iPads today, a mere two weeks before the first anniversary of the icon’s death.
