A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston

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With warmth, candor, and an impressive recall of detail, Robyn describes the two meeting as teenagers in the 1980s, and how their lives and friendship evolved as Whitney recorded her first album and Robyn pursued her promising Division I basketball career. Together during countless sold-out world tours, behind the scenes as hit after hit was recorded, through Whitney’s marriage and the birth of her daughter, the two navigated often challenging families, great loves, and painful losses, always supporting each other with laughter and friendship. She did later tell me that she was feeling vulnerable,” she says. “She probably was feeling defeated. I think she slapped my face because she felt that I had done something, and she wanted me to know that I’d earned that slap. But she gave me a hug right after. Because she loved me.”

A superb teaching, novel-like book about love that protects but does not possess. We may think we’re not ready for this, but we are. . . . I so admire the dignity of this woman. And her beauty.” There’s no use in speculating about someone’s sexuality from the grave, but Robyn’s story surely feels like the “I fell for a straight girl” narrative, except over several decades as opposed to the usual semester in high school/college. There’s clear animosity for both people’s partners, and I was just sad and uncomfortable for the both of them!! Robyn has an uncanny ability to use small experiences she remembered to show the larger destructive patterns many people in this story engaged in With warmth, candor, and an impressive recall of detail, Robyn gives readers insight into Whitney's life and career. She traces the years from when she and Whitney first met as teenagers in the 1980s to the recording of Whitney's first album and the infinite success that followed. From countless sold-out world tours to her epic rendition of the US national anthem to the set of The Bodyguard, her tempestuous marriage, and the birth of her only child, Robyn was there.

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With warmth, candor, and an impressive recall of detail, Robyn describes the two meeting as teenagers in the 1980s, and how their lives and friendship evolved as Whitney recorded her first album and Robyn pursued her promising Division I basketball career. Together during countless sold-out world tours, behind the scenes as hit after hit was recorded, through Whitney's marriage and the birth of her daughter, the two navigated often challenging families, great loves, and painful losses, always supporting each other with laughter and friendship.

So when you found out she was marrying Bobby, how was that for you? Were you like, "Okay, how's this going to affect us? Do I got to deal with this dude?" I remember in the documentary Can I Be Me, there’s footage of him trying to pal around with you. And you seem a little annoyed with him. However, while she is all too happy to share about the destructive patterns of everyone else in Whitney’s life, it sometimes feels like she is unrealistically casting herself as the “hero” of this story, and the only one who ever did right by Whitney.

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And that’s what happened when you eventually left Whitney’s team. You bought a shirt for George Michael on behalf of Whitney, and Bobby was upset, and Whitney didn’t do anything—and that was the last straw? By the others, she doesn’t only mean the legions of fans; she means those who profited directly from Houston – the business associates and layers of family who, Crawford contends in the book, bled the singer so dry that she had no option but to keep going on tour, even as her drug abuse left her physically vulnerable. Cocaine had been part of the two women’s lives as teenagers, until Crawford’s mother had found out and yelled at her to quit. It took Crawford a while, but she did. At the time, Houston had vowed to quit, too. With awful poignancy, Houston once told her: “Cocaine can’t go where we’re going.” Crawford’s acceptance of Houston’s rotten behaviour can at times be infuriating. For years, Houston was actively homophobic, publicly comparing homosexuality to bestiality, then privately blasting Crawford for not denying the rumours about their relationship strenuously enough – behaviour Crawford disliked, but went along with. After Crawford quit her job with Houston, she was offered a lucrative marketing job at Arista Records, until the offer was suddenly and inexplicably withdrawn. Months later, Crawford ran into LA Reid, the then head of Arista, who told her it was Houston who had nixed the job, because “she wasn’t comfortable with me bringing you in”. It reads as a tremendous betrayal, all the more so because, in the book, Crawford recounts how at the time she defended Houston’s behaviour to her wife. “She’s not in her right mind,” she told Lisa. “It’s the people around her.”

You first met Whitney Houston in the summer of 1980 because of a summer job. Tell me about the first time you saw her. Since Whitney's death in 2012, that trusted and loyal friend, Robyn Crawford, has stayed out of the limelight and held the great joys, wild adventures, and hard truths of her life with Whitney close to her heart. In A Song for You, Robyn breaks her silence to share the moving and often complicated story of her life and relationship with Whitney. Robyn also endured tremendous Houston became mega-famous when she signed with Arista Records: with a string of number one hit records and sold out concert tours world wide-- her relationship with Crawford was constantly scrutinized by the press. Instead of giving interviews, which may have improved her social standing somewhat, Houston made harsh and derogatory statements against homosexuality and defined herself rigidly as a "man's woman". Behind closed doors, Houston often said that she couldn't be herself, as she made plans to go through with her marriage to Brown. Immediately following the wedding the couple became tabloid fodder with their very public fights and drama, and Houston's use of substance escalated.

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Waithe arrives an hour early for this interview; a lifelong, diehard Whitney Houston fan, she devoured A Song For You in three days and is eager to let Crawford know the impact she's had on her. "I don't exist in this world without you being as authentic as you were," Waithe tells her when they first meet. "Because yes, I grew up watching Whitney Houston on TV, but I would always zero in on you. You've got to be special for somebody to look past Whitney Houston and go 'Who's that?'" Robyn Crawford has been this mysterious woman that we’ve all seen by Whitney’s side from the very beginning of Whitney’s music career. We’ve heard many stories about Robyn. But we’ve never heard from Robyn...until now! In her long awaited memoir she finally shares her side of all the stories we’ve heard from so many others. But clearing up rumors is not the only thing this book is about. It's been nearly four decades since Robyn Crawford played college basketball, but when she arrives to the O offices in New York City one chilly fall morning, she walks with the swagger of an athlete. Her face lights up whenever her wife, Lisa, looks her way, but otherwise, she wears a serious expression. Her voice is soft, her energy calm—so calm, in fact, that it’s hard to believe this is a woman on the cusp of releasing a controversial memoir about her relationship with one of history’s most iconic pop stars. I didn't like some of the things she said. I didn't feel like it was helping things. But she didn't care at that point. She would say: “They'll say what they want to say.”