Whitney Houston and the Actor-Musician: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib | “The message is that greatness can only be unexpected for so long before it becomes routine and pushes the great to some collapse. With Whitney, the first decade-plus seemed impossible. She was polished and presented in a way that set her firmly on the edge of titanic and fragile. She was a black pop star in the era of Michael, Prince, and Janet. But she was a black pop star who, at first, avoided the societal pitfalls of being black, a woman, famous, and powerful in a country that is often only comfortable with a person