20 Questions: Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston is the world's top-selling female recording artist. Her debut album, "Whitney Houston," sold a record-setting 15,000,000 copies. Together, her first two solo albums sold to more than 28,500,000 fans around the world. The title song of her third album. "I'm Your Baby Tonight." is already a number-one single and the album may challenge the sales of her first two releases. Despite her enormous commercial impact and sold-out concert tours, the 27-year-old New Jersey native, daughter of Gospel and soul great Cissy Houston, has been dogged by criticism and rumors. Some critics attack her music as being "white-washed" and "bland." "There are contradictory rumors about her sex life. Is she gay? Is she dating movie superstar Eddie Murphy or his buddy, television personality Arsenio Hall? Nelson George told us. "Ten years ago, when I interviewed the then-skinny seventeen-year-old Whitney, her chief desire was to meet Michael Jackson. Now Whitney is the star people aspire to meet. She seems determined to set the record straight about who she is, attempting to define herself as a public personality. Sitting in a big chair, her legs stretched out before her, 'Nippy'---as her family calls her---has grown and is still growing."

1.

Playboy: What was the weirdest come-on you ever fielded?

Houston: I was in an airport and my main man came over and said. "Yeah, aren't you Morticia who plays on The Addams Family?" Then I asked him, "Aren't you Pugsley? How's Uncle Fester and Cousin Itt?" We went through this whole thing before he broke down and said, "I just wanted to meet you." I said, "Why didn't you just say that in the first place, brother? What's the matter with you?" I guess he was trying to add some spice. You don't have to throw no lines at me. People think that they already know me when they meet me, so they already got their thing together on how they're going to approach me. When they finally do meet me, they go, "Oh, you're really down. I can talk to you."

2.

Playboy: Were you tall in high school?

Houston: Not always, but I got tall. I grew in one year. It was amazing. I'm a little uncomfortable with my body, because I'm usually taller than most of the fellas and it's kind of uncomfortable for them and it's really uncomfortable for me. So now I'm into wearing flats. I've always had long legs. I've been told that's a very sexy thing. I was talking to a friend of mine the other night and he was asking me, "Whitney, is there anything that you would like to change about yourself?" I said, "I wish I had shorter legs." I didn't mean that I wish I had shorter legs. I love the length of my legs, but it's hard for me to keep weight on rather than take it off. I know if my legs were a bit shorter, I could keep that weight on.

3.

Playboy: Do you think of yourself as sexy?

Houston: There are times when I am very sexual, when I'm just hungry, like a lion. But there are times when I can do without it. I don't need it. You know, it's not a necessity in my life. I swear to you, it has a lot to do with when the moon is full. The elements have a real deep effect on me and I respond to them.

4.

Playboy: What's your idea of a romantic evening?

Houston: Just being with the person I want to be with. Not doing much of anything. Maybe watching TV together or playing Nintendo. And, no. baby, I ain't cooking nothing. I'll make you a sandwich. I'll send out for some French fries.

5.

Playboy: You live in New Jersey, just across the bridge from New York City, but you're not known for hanging out there.

Houston: I've been to the "in" spots there. When I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. I partied my brains out. I was a partying monkey. But now what I find myself doing is sitting around looking at people. And, you know, that's kind of strange, because people are looking back at me. So, basically, when I go out, it's not like I can just hang. Most of the time, people want to talk to me. I hang with my family. They are the craziest people in the world. They just amaze me all the time. You know, they got new shit all the time, so we kind of entertain one another.

6.

Playboy: How do you distinguish lust from love?

Houston: Most men who are in lust with me are in awe of me. It's a certain way they talk and act. They ask other people about me and stuff like that. There's very few men I meet who aren't in lust with me. I know the men who truly want to get to know me, who like me genuinely, who really don't have any agendas. Those kinds of men are basically honest and like to laugh. See, the way to really get to me is to have a great sense of humor. You want to get to know me, you have to make me laugh.

In this life, you got to laugh at a lot of stuff that a lot of people don't find funny. You can't take things too seriously. So when I find a man who has a sense of humor, it means that he is sensitive and able not to take things to heart. People got a lot of drama. Oh, please, people got dramas for days.

7.

Playboy: Who are sexier, singers or comedians? Do you get more guys than Marsha Warfield?

Houston: The guy who tells jokes gets most of the women, because women want to let down their guard. Most people shield themselves from anything that may hurt them---like rejection and disappointment. Comedians get the most women because of that humorous quality. As for Marsha Warfield, you don't want me to answer that.

8.

Playboy: What is your relationship with Eddie Murphy?

Houston: You mean Edward Reagan Murphy? Mmm ... mmm ... [laughs] ... Ed and I are friends. [Blushes] Yeah, it's a difficult one. It's funny when you try to explain a friend-and-lover situation. We're friends and we respect each other. Time will reveal how serious Ed and I are about each other. We enjoy going out together. He likes to talk to me sometimes. I like to talk to him sometimes. It's not a constant thing. I've been talking to him a lot lately. He wants to know how I'm doing. How I'm feeling. How everything is going. It's that kind of relationship. We're like friends in love.

9.

Playboy: What's your relationship with Arsenio Hall? He implied on his show that you two were dating.

Houston: [Laughs] Now, that's cold, because, you know, Arsenio and Ed are like the best of friends. I do not have a relationship with Arsenio. I do have a relationship with Eddie. Arsenio and I are friends.

About that business on his show, I loved it. It brought me out. I had to go on his show to say, Now, come on, Arsenio, why are you lying like a dog? It let me know in a weird sort of way that Arsenio likes me and wants to be friends.

10.

Playboy: Over the past few years, there have been innuendoes about your sex life---that you and Robyn Crawford, your executive assistant, are lovers. Why do you think people are saying that about you?

Houston: How the hell do I know? What people really see is the closeness between Robyn and me. Even when we were kids growing up, people thought we were gay. I think it had a lot to do with Robyn's being athletic and playing basketball and being very much into fitness. Then she got me into it. That has followed us. People were like. "Yeah. Yeah. They're gay. They're lesbos." But I know part of the reason is that most men who say that want to jump into my pants. So they just think, Well, she's gay. She don't want to be bothered. So she must be gay. It's something that happens to people in my position. I don't know why. You're either gay or on drugs. Either your career's falling down or you're coming back. I'm tired of it. Now I just take it as a joke, because I don't make it a point of letting people know, or allowing them to know, who I'm sleeping with. People automatically want to know that about famous people. Who they doing it to. Who they ain't doing it to. They want to know all that mess, and for me, that's private. I don't think that has to be out on the streets.

11.

Playboy: Do you feel pressure as a black woman in this country to maintain yourself in a certain way? Would you otherwise feel free to do the sort of things Madonna does?

Houston: No. My mother raised me to be dignified. She said. "You're going to have to set an example." We all know wrong and right. And I'm not here to tell nobody what's right and what's wrong. I'm just going to try to be me. I wouldn't feel comfortable taking off my clothes, because I was taught that that's really undignified, that it's really tacky and uncool. And I don't think that black people can get away with too much. When you're white, you're right. It ain't nothing new.

12.

Playboy: What other lessons did you learn from your parents?

Houston: Whenever we had a disagreement in my family, my mother and father would allow us to call a meeting, and even if we had a problem with them, we could say. "Hey, Ma. I didn't like the way you did me the other day." or "Daddy, can't you talk a little better?" We got a lot of stuff out because we were able to be honest with one another. I would always call the meeting. It was always my brother who was picking on me or doing something I didn't like, and my mother would say. "Michael, why do you do that to your sister?" He'd say. "Because I love her and I have nothing else to do and she's my youngest sister." From that, I could understand how to deal with him. Just bring things to the table. Lay them out. Let's discuss them. That's the only way we get things done.

13.

Playboy: At this point in your career, are you confronted with racism?

Houston: Racism doesn't play a part in my life. See, the heavy part about racism for me is that it's just a word we use today. At one time, there was segregation. At one time, it was prejudice. And now it's just racism. Don't they all mean the same thing? Doesn't it mean one group of people discriminating against another group of people? Well, I've seen that happen in every country. I try not to take it personally. I will not be discriminated against---not this day and time, anyway. I think about the brothers and sisters who came before me. Talk about racism! Stories my momma and daddy used to tell me: My mother was the premiere act at a hotel in Vegas and she had to set up a trailer outside the back of the hotel because they didn't want black people staying in the hotel, and she had to walk through the kitchen to get on stage because she couldn't walk through the lobby like everybody else. My parents have crossed that path. They did that so that I wouldn't have to deal with it. So I really have no business sitting here talking about racism, because a lot of brothers and sisters have fought the fight so that we can stand here today and be judged not by skin color but by the content of our character.

14.

Playboy: How do you think Louis Farrakhan is fighting the fight?

Houston: I admire the man. Farrakhan has come a long way. There's a certain rage and anger about being black in this country. But now we must learn how to fight it. He has come to that point in his life where he understands that anger is not what it's about. It's about dealing with white people with our minds, because that's how they've been dealing with us.

I met Farrakhan when my mother was being honored in Chicago. He came to the ceremony and I noticed him staring at me. Constantly. It made me uncomfortable, but I smiled back. After that. I met his son Wallace at Eddie's house, and he was saying. "When my father looks at you, he sees the God in you That is compelled to do what you do. That God has blessed you with so many gifts. My father's looking at your soul." I said, "Deep. That's deep." It looked like he was looking through me, not at me. I could feel him at all points of the room.

15.

Playboy: People have criticized you for not being black enough. Is that a form of black racism---as if you must conform to someone else's vision of what black is?

Houston: I wasn't raised in a household where I was told I had to be this way: "You're black, this is how you have to act." I can do whatever I want to do. I think that it is an unjustified criticism. I could understand it if I were living white and acting white. What grants you not being black? I help as many black organizations as I can, because I'm concerned about my brothers and sisters. I try to do the best I can in showing that. I don't know what other way there is.

16.

Playboy: What do you think of Public Enemy's black nationalistic message?

Houston: I like Public Enemy. I like their message. They give young black children a sense of self-esteem. You can be what you want to be. You can be a junkie. You can be a dope dealer. too, but that ain't going to take you nowhere. When rap is a message about something positive that encourages young people of all races---those are the rap records I like most of all.

Black nationalism? You know, it's funny; it seems like everything has turned three hundred sixty degrees. I didn't know that back in the Sixties, this is what black power was all about. Black nationalism is, like, don't let the white man in. When they have their meetings, we don't be sitting in on them, so why do they have to sit in on ours? But, again, it's still segregation.

17.

Playboy: Don't you think that rappers are giving more important messages than R&B singers? Isn't it possible to listen to a million R&B records and not hear anything other than the word love?

Houston: How can I put this? Rap has made a place in music young people can relate to, because it allows them to relate to their own situations. People like me, like Michael [Jackson]. Luther [Vandross], we have a different approach to our music. Rap artists are dealing with the streets, because they just made it from the streets to the studio. I'll go back to my old neighborhood and it's the same shit. It ain't changed. The crack dealers are still on the corner. I like message music, but I like to deliver a message in a form of love. I understand the street situation, but it's better for me to do what I can do this way. I like to sing songs that make people happy. And that's what my songs do. People hear that hook and they'll be singing it for the rest of their lives. There's a time for seriousness and a time for being happy.

18.

Playboy: Did you intend for your song Miracle to be an anti-abortion message or a pro-life message?

Houston: It wasn't geared toward any of that mess. I'm serious as cancer. Birth and life are miracles. When I sang the song. I just went into my spirit and I said. "Father, give me the right spirit to sing this song." I try to stay as neutral as I can, because I don't want to be seen to be on this side or on that side.

19.

Playboy: You're a Baptist who went to a Catholic high school. What kind of experience was that?

Houston: Catholicism is a trip. I was serving a God of love, a God Who has compassion and is kind and loves His children unconditionally. Who sent His son here to die for our sins so we wouldn't be accountable for them. And these people are talking about damnation and purgatory and hell, and if you're good and you don't have any abortions and you don't take any birth-control pills, you're going to heaven. I went to confession one time in seventh grade; it totally turned me off. I sat behind the curtain and said. "Listen. I'm just here because I want to know what this is all about." The priest said. "Well. do you have any sins to confess?" I said. "I do, but God already knows what I've done. Why do I have to sit here and talk to you?" He said. "Really, you don't." We had a deep conversation within a couple of minutes. He was kicking it and I was kicking it back with him. At the end of the conversation. I said. "Well. I guess there's no need for me to be here." He said. "I guess not. I hope that you have found what you wanted to see." I said. "Yes. I did, and I won't be back."

20.

Playboy: What do singers sit around and talk about?

Houston: Nonsingers. [Laughs] We talk about people who can't sing. We try to be constructive about it, saying. "You know, if she just did so and so, she would be right." Some we like. Some we don't. Some we say. "A pretty good voice if she really worked at it." Not everybody can sing. I kid you not.

the tallest r&b queen hits the high notes on rap, race and her ongoing relationship with eddie murphy