(Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)
Bobby Brown’s sister is speaking out about the infamous Whitney Houston-related photo she sold to a tabloid nearly a decade ago.
After Pusha T told Angie Martinez that his album producer Kanye West licensed a photo of Houston’s drug-filled bathroom for the LP’s cover, folks believed Tina Brown — Houston’s former sister-in-law — may have profited from the $85,000 fee.
But Brown told The Blast she did not make any money from the transaction.
“Kanye West did not purchase the picture from me or my son [Shayne Brown],” she said Thursday, May 31.
She told the website the photo, which was snapped in 2006 to and sold the National Enquirer, was the result of her and Houston diving into a drug binge that included smoking crack.
“During the time the picture was taken, in 2006, my sister Whitney and I were at a very low and self-destructive point in our lives, it was not only her mess, it was mine as well,” she said before insisting the image was “not at all a betrayal of one another.” “Together, she and I decided to take the pictures in the bathroom and share with the world, the pain we were going through … it was a united cry for help.”
Brown also maintained that despite the image, which fired up Houston’s cousin Damon Elliott but left her nephew Gary Michael Houston unbothered, there was no strife between the two.
“Throughout that chaotic time and until her death, Whitney and I remained the best of friends and sisters,” she said, noting “the public attention and speculation, brought on by Kanye’s broadcasted purchase of that picture and usage have opened old wounds.”
For Brown’s part, she’d like to know why Ye “feels the picture is significant to him, at this time.”