In today’s episode of The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Kanye West, the family of late singer Whitney Houston has hit out at the rapper, after he licensed an image of her drug-covered bathroom for use on Pusha T‘s new album cover.
Houston, who had a long and tragic history of drug abuse, died in a hotel bathtub in 2012. This week, it was reported that West had paid in the vicinity of $US 85,000 for the rights to an image of her bathroom, littered with drug paraphernalia.
The image in question was first published in US tabloid The National Enquirer back in 2006, when Whitney Houston was married to Bobby Brown:
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/999771408258318338
The late singer’s cousin Damon Elliott spoke to US media this week, saying that his “frantic” daughter called him to tell him the news. “She sent me this picture from the album cover and I immediately got sick to my stomach because it took me right back to six years ago,” he told People.
Elliott, the son of famed singer Dionne Warwick, has worked with Kanye before, producing a Keyshia Cole track. He slammed his former collaborator, saying:
“I was actually in shock because I’m in the music business … I’ve watched the train wreck happening, but I didn’t think he’d go this far in invading someone’s family privacy. To do something for a publicity stunt to sell records, it’s absolutely disgusting. It hurt my family and my daughter. It’s petty. It’s tacky.”
Elliott has not yet spoken to Kanye, but has asked for an apology and that the album art be switched out for something else. He added:
“I just want him to tell me why he did it. What is the creative side of this? What’s the point? It shows no creativity … [You’re] hurting people. It knocked the wind out of me last night. When someone passes, you try to mourn and move on and remember the good times.”
Whitney’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, who also struggled with drug abuse, passed away in hospice care in Georgia in 2015, after being discovered unresponsive in a bathtub at her home in January of that year.
