Word: houston
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Waiting to Exhale sound track is a virtual Who's Who of divadom, as compiled by Houston and the album's producer-composer, Kenneth ("Babyface") Edmonds. Along with Houston, the album features numbers by such highly regarded R.-and-B. performers as Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige. Yet Houston more than holds her own, particularly on Why Does It Hurt So Bad, with its masterly balance of pop zip and soulful melancholy. She was an enthusiastic advocate of the idea that the album should feature only women--a popular concept these days, with such recent all-female...
Interviewed recently on a beach near her getaway home in Miami, Houston, 32, projected the contradictions. As she arrived clad in a form-fitting purple dress, hand in hand with Brown--the two have reconciled after a recent separation--she seemed ready for a camera to swoop down for an adoring close-up. Yet she also flashed some feisty homegirl attitude. "People think I'm Miss Prissy Pooh-Pooh, but I'm not; I like to have fun," she says, jabbing a finger in the air. "I can get down, really freakin' dirty with you. I was born in Newark...
...Tough" is not a word usually associated with Houston or her music. "Safe" and "homogenized" are, though not always fairly. She has a towering, dynamic voice, but when she sings material that's too slight for her skills (such as Love Is a Contact Sport), it's an unseemly mismatch, like Grant Hill dunking on a fifth-grader. But when Houston takes on a tune worthy of her gifts (like You Give Good Love), the result is something winged, almost seraphic. What's more, with the huge success of 1992's The Bodyguard--the movie made more than $400 million...
...ready to prove it again. Just before Christmas, Houston will be seen in Waiting to Exhale, the movie adaptation of Terry McMillan's popular novel about the lives of four black women. The sound track, containing three numbers by Houston, has just arrived in the stores and is already racking up hefty sales. In January Houston starts shooting The Preacher's Wife, a remake of the 1947 Cary Grant--Loretta Young comedy The Bishop's Wife, co-starring Denzel Washington, and she's at work on a gospel sound track for the film. Meanwhile, in search of projects to produce...
...Houston has not yet made the same mark with her acting. In Exhale, she wisely works as part of an ensemble that includes Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon and Loretta Devine. Bassett has most of the showy scenes (in one, her character sets her adulterous husband's belongings on fire), while Houston's scenes are quieter, less demanding (an emotional phone call to her mother, a slow dance at a party). Says author McMillan: "She's going to be a really better actress when she starts seeing herself as an actress and not a singer who acts...