A new book on Whitney Houston by her producer Narada Michael Walden tells the story of the pop diva's rise to stardom and her musical journey.
Narada Michael Walden has produced some of Whitney Houston's most memorable songs like "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." The Emmy and Grammy-winning producer recently discussed the book he is writing on the pop diva.
"Her death was so shocking and sudden that I wanted to create something to keep alive the beautiful aspects of her life. The media was lashing out on the addiction and ignoring her musical genius," Walden told Reuters.
The book has been titled "Whitney Houston: The Voice, the Music, the Inspiration," and co-written with Richard Buskin. The story describes Walden's first meeting with Houston when she was only 13 and accompanying her mother Cissy Houston to the studio where she was working on a record with Walden. The producer admits forgetting all about that little girl until after many years he got a call to work on Houston's first album.
"The first take was the keeper. Instead of laboring on it for the better part of a day or even longer, we were done in a matter of minutes," he said, noting Houston always worked fast.
Walden also expressed his wish to work with Houston's daughter.
"If she wants to, I'd love to produce her and keep alive the professional image of her mother and focus on the positive," he said.
"These projects are just some of the things that are a continuation of her legacy," said her sister-in-law/manager, Pat Houston. "They're showing Whitney in a very beautiful light. For the past 10 years or more, it has been very turbulent with the media and her personal life."
St. Nicolas still remembers his first meeting with Houston. "That day I remember really well," Nicholas recalled during an interview with CNN. "It was shot at the Four Seasons Hotel and I was shooting all of them. I shot amazing pictures of Whitney and (Bobby Brown) too. It was a very good time in their relationship. And they were both in great spirits. But it was the way that Whitney looked at her in that picture and the way Bobbi Kristina was focused on her, I feel that it captured the connection, obviously some kind of karmic connection of not between just a mother and a child but between two souls. And I thought it was s such a poignant moment and it was so full of joy and they seem so content and so complete and I thought it was a nice way to end the book. That was her heart right there."