Sunday, February 12, 2012
Born, August 9, 1963(1963-08-09) Newark, New Jersey, U.S.. Died, February 11, 2012(2012-02-11) (aged 48) ...
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| Whitney Elizabeth Houstontion |
According to CNN, Beverly Hills Police confirmed the singer was found dead inside a Beverly Hilton hotel room at approximately 3:55 p.m. PT. The cause of death is being investigated.
Houston had recently staged a comeback in 2009, after a tumultuous divorce from singer Bobby Brown in 2006 after 14 years of marriage. The ex-couple have a daughter together, Bobbi Kristina. Brown and Houston battled substance abuse issues throughout their marriage, and their travails were well-publicized. But in recent years, Houston had made attempts to revive her once thriving music career only to find that her show-stopping voice had gathered some rust.
At her height, Houston was the music industry's reigning diva, releasing chart-topping albums well into the late 1990s, and earning her place as one of the best-selling artists in the world. Her unparalleled voice and All-American beauty propelled her onto the silver screen as well, with roles in the "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale." The soundtrack for the former film yielded a string of hit singles and broke myriad chart records as well.
Take a look back at the iconic singer's life in photos.
Houston, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and the late John Houston, was discovered by Arista Records honcho Clive Davis in the early-1980s and he would go on to guide her career to the tune of 170 million albums, singles and videos sold. The iconic singer's hit songs — from "The Greatest Love of All" to "I Will Always Love You" — are now radio staples and firmly entrenched in the pop music canon.
Her influence can be heard on a generation of young singers who cite her as an inspiration, from Mariah Carey, Brandy and Monica to Christina Aguilera and Beyonce.
But Houston was dogged by her demons. In a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey she detailed the years of addiction and the toll they had taken on her personal and professional lives.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Zanzibaris mark 48th Revolution anniversary with the legends
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| Zanzibar Revolution: Political Leaders |
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| Bi. Kidude |
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| binti Saad (1880 - 1950) |
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| Members of the First Zanzibar Government (1963). |
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Vandalized church sign says Beyonce’s baby is Satan
“Beyonce had her baby. Satan is on Earth.”
The church pastor removed the message and said the church had nothing to do with it. This was instead the work of some misguided soul with time (and perhaps a ladder) on his hands.
In other Blue Ivy Carter news, parents whose kids had the misfortune of being born at the same hospital around the same time the instant celebrity was born are raising Cain over the special treatment the Carter family received.
New dad Neil Coulon, 38, of Brooklyn, told the New York Daily News that Beyonce’s security forces kept him out of the neonatal intensive care unit, preventing him from seeing his preemie twins.
“I know they spent $1.3 million and I’m just a contractor from Bed-Stuy, but the treatment we received was not okay,” Coulon said, referring to the huge check the star couple reportedly stroked to reserve a huge section of the hospital. “This is the NICU. Nobody cares if you’re a celebrity. Nobody is star-gazing. They just want to see their children.”
A hospital spokeswoman told the NYDN she hadn’t heard any complaints. Lord have mercy.
Snoop Dogg’s drug case is a bust
Rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested on marijuana charges at the Mexican border on the weekend. Is the unspoken détente between pop and the police over?
The news that Snoop Dogg was arrested for marijuana possession came as a shock to the music community yesterday. Who'd have guessed that the composer of 'Smoke Weed Every Day', 'The Weed Iz Mine' and 'Smokin Smokin Weed' was a habitual drug user? When he prevailed upon listeners to “smoke til your eyes get cataracts”, I always thought it was an ironic comment on healthy living.
The relationship between law enforcement and pop music is interestingly fraught. Since the rebellious hey day of rock ‘n roll, there has been a strong outlaw, boundary breaking and libertarian strand to pop culture, which is emphasised by the way most song lyrics are delivered in the first person, and is imprinted (rightly or wrongly) with a strong sense of autobiographical experience.
In the late sixties, police forces briefly went into overdrive arresting household name pop stars who openly espoused drug use, staging raids on the homes of members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, leading to William Rees Mogg’s “who breaks a butterfly on a wheel” Times editorial. Despite many subsequent drug busts and the hounding in the US of serial provocateurs like Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe and Eminem (usually for obscenity), you would have to say there has been a kind of stand-off between pop and the police ever since, with a blind eye turned to the openly challenging content of both songs and interviews. There have been occasional outbreaks of hostilities when vigorously anti-establishment musical genres like punk first take hold of public consciousness, leading to spates of arrests of scene leaders like The Sex Pistols or Clash. But if the forces of law and order were seriously intent on cracking down on unapologetic drug culture, how could reggae have flourished, techno have boomed or a group like the Grateful Dead become one of the biggest touring operations in America?
Hip hop, perhaps because of its roots in poverty and gangsta culture, has shifted the balance. The list of rappers jailed for quite serious crimes would make for an impressive prison concert (including the late Tupac Shakur, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim, Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi, TI, Ja Rule, DMX and ODB). But then, if you added every pop star who has sung about drugs or boasted about illegal adventures in interviews, you would have the most star studded festival bill in history. If they allow instruments into prisons, that is.
The targeting of rappers and hip hop shows has led to accusations (specifically denied by the New York Police Department) that many US police forces have specialised hip hop crime units, which would suggest that any unspoken détente between pop and the police is over. In the UK this week, there were complaints (by music agents and MPs) about heavy-handed policing of the urban music scene in London, with accusations of discrimination based on ethnicity. Some performers have complained of being searched before they go on stage.
Beyonce takes baby Blue home under high security
Hospital officials confirmed that Beyonce and Jay-Z have taken their newborn daughter home from New York’s Lennox Hill Hospital, where she was born on January 7. A procession of vehicles with blacked-out windows made a speedy exit from the hospital’s side gate in the wee hours of Tuesday,
witnesses said. Two black SUVs motored quickly out of the facility’s E. 76th Street loading dock at 1:30 am. Moments later, a van parked on a nearby corner reversed into the same loading dock, and the large roll-down gate closed. The gate reopened a few minutes later and the van drove out, turned the wrong way on the one-way 76th Street, and then headed north on Park Avenue.
It was “very precise, very military-like,” the New York Daily News quoted a witness as saying. “Immediately, security personnel began leaving the hospital,”
50 Cent: 'I don't think I'm gonna live much longer'
50 Cent has declared that he does not believe he has much longer to live.
Though insisting that he is not suicidal, the rapper still took to Twitter.com/50Cent to apparently prophesise his own death.
He wrote:
I'll be honest I don't think I'm gonna live much longer. That's why I started my street king movement. I want to mean more in other people's lives.Street King is the name of the rapper's own brand of energy drink. An social enterprise initiative that sees a hungry child given a meal for every can sold.
50 went on to explain: "To be conscious that life is short is not suicidal. I'm good if I die tonight. I've taken care of the people who took care of me when I couldn't take care myself."
But he did appear to be growing weary of his musical career, going on to tweet: "I have lost all faith in the team I'm on. I have nothing left to say. I will not be promoting my music… I'm going to deliver this album then I have a film I wrote to focus on I'm not upset I'm just convinced this is not how I want to remembered."The outburst took another turn for the bizarre when he explained how he would like to be a bird: "This morning I was looking out the window. I saw a bird fly right onto the ledge. It felt like he was looking right at me… I'd like to [be] a bird so I could fly and shit on the world. Then you all could say 50 shat on me. That's luck right? Then don't wipe the shit off."
50 Cent's next album 'Black Magic' is set for release in the summer, and is produced by Dr. Dre and Swizz Beats.
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