Qazz said:

I think Clive and Arista ignorantly assumed that Whitney wouldn't have to do much to appease black listeners because she was black and had that voice, so they'd automatically embrace her. So instead they worked overtime to make her accessible to white media and listeners, who would be a tougher sell. It took forever for Whitney's first album to be completed because Clive would keep sending her back to replace or re-record songs that sounded "too black." I heard a story about how Whitney's original rendition of "Saving All My Love For You" featured her channeling Aretha and vocally tearing the roof of the joint, and that when Clive heard it, he was like "Hell no. This won't appeal to white listeners, redo it." Ultimately her first album wound up doing a terrific job of balancing both Pop and R&B for both demographics, and as a result it did equally well at both formats -- but her second album didn't. After winning over white folks, her followup album went too far with its pop sound to keep them appeased... and while it maintained her pop success, it lost some of her R&B appeal. Every single from Whitney's debut album hit #1 on the black charts, but none of the singles from 1987's Whitney did (though some of them I think peaked as high as #2.) So, yeah, by the '89 Soul Train Awards, her music had become too watered down and at worst it seemed like she had sold out and at best she just seemed too boring. This is why with her next album Clive loosened the noose, brought in LA Reid & Babyface and Luther Vandross (in addition to retaining her pop sound via Narada Michael Walden) and Whitney was allowed to show off how well she could soulfully belt in ways that she had been stifled from doing before. [Edited 12/5/14 9:54am]

Yes, all of THAT^ is a true story.

It must be said that the California Valley Girl look on a black woman from New Jersey really made Whitney's situation worse:


Blame that old devil Clive Davis for THAT^ bullshit too!

FanofMusic84 said:

As a young black girl growing up in the 80's and 90's I loved me some Whitney and Janet. But I always thought that Whitney was a more controlled artist. While Janet, once she fired her father was an artist more in control of her own career. I remember hearing back in the day that Whitney had heard about how Janet and Madonna were writing and producing some of their own music. She took this to Clive and he in return told her not to worry about that just sing the songs and she would be fine. This I think hurt Whitney in the long run.
[Edited 12/6/14 5:24am]
[Edited 12/6/14 6:45am]

FanofMusic84 said:

Scorp said:

see, that's why the industry is headed where it is, and that's into oblivion because it has exercised major miscalculations w/sole focus on record sales rather than cultivating talent and promoting authenticity

to say the response to those black artists "crossing over" was small thinking.......the crossing over aspect in of itself, just the term itself is offensive when u think about it...

...what exactly are u crossing over too

based on its construct, "crossing over" suggest one audience should be held in higher esteem than the next......that automatically creates a juxtaposition way before the backlash even happens

if things were allowed to be presented in genuine context, there wouldn't be a need to encourage anyone to crossover, there would never be a sense of alienation

it would be a situation where whoever enjoys your music will support it w/out any form of pretense

I don't have to make anything up because it just so happened I lived during a time growing up where I was able to witness this stuff firsthand

Whitney Houston wasn't the only black artist who was encourage to change his/her look...there's a plethora of black artists from the late 70s/early 80s, artists of which their record labels felt they had "crossover appeal" were encouraged to modify their look to appeal to white audiences exclusively.....

that in of itself was wrong

[Edited 12/5/14 20:09pm]

Black artists being successful in other markets were considered threats to Black culture.

However, Whitney's instantly reached pop success from onset of her career.You give good love was not for pop markets, it naturally crossed over to pop charts as it appealed to pop markets. There was no shunning of her core Black base, or appealing exclusively to Whites. Whitney's music appealed to all ethnicities. Black, Whites, brown, orange. Most artists modify their looks in a visionary world. Visually, Whitney didn't do masive makeover ala like Janet Jackson. The term crossing aspect over were coined by Blacks. That's part of the problem. Interestingly, a lighter Whitney clone in Mariah Carey wasn't faced with this issue.

[Edited 12/5/14 20:58pm]

[Edited 12/5/14 21:03pm]

[Edited 12/5/14 21:07pm]

this is how it tends to start....

then record execs witness this dynamic and when they determine an artist who has achieved this distinction has the attribute for "pop sensability", they begin to steer that individual into seeking an exclusive pop following, an exclusive pop audience

they exploit that artist to the core, but leave them ill-equipped to deal with the ramnifications of such a extreme change of direction

and the proof represents itself when you see a shift of who's present in attendance during any particular concert of shows after a premier black artist, particularly in the 80s "crossed over"

take Lionel Richie, when he sang w/the Commodores during the 70s, when he performed those concerts, the majority of people in that audience was black, by the late 80s, that audience was primarily white.....no balance, extreme shifts......that's not natural, there was some push that caused that to happen

and during that time in the 70s, Lionel Richie was not just performing what would be considered soulful songs, he wrote love songs, love ballads and his original following supported it with fervor

same thing with Michael Jackson, same thing with Whitney Houston during the late 80s

then record execs took it up another notch to create the full shift in regards to economics....ever increasing ticket prices that manipulated the shift that much more.....knowing that most black record buyers could not afford those ever increasing ticket prices, so you had an entire populace of fan support being phased out

inconspicous moves like that leads to future backlash too in regards to the support of those premier black artists during that period of time.......

we didn't create that term because we didn't introduce that concept, and we sure had no say so in terms of dictating it. we conversed about it, but we surely did not introduce it

in regards to Mariah Carey, u just answered your own question

an artis having the talent to generate music for all cultures of people to enjoy, that's a beautiful thing...that's not the issue, never been the issue.....it's about the means in which it happens, or the response to it once something like that happens, and the presentation afterwards is the real issue that cheats all of us in the long run

[Edited 12/6/14 5:42am]