Whitney Houston dead at 48, Bobby Brown tells music audience during a New Edition performance "I love you Whitney"

Whitney Houston

in recent times

Houston, a music icon who died suddenly Sat. afternoon, in earlier years with her ex husband Bobby Brown, whom she married in 1992 and later divorced in 2007. Brown, who rose to moderate and short term fame as member of the R and B group New Edition and subsequent solo artist, had a rocky and sometimes abusive relationship with Houston. Choking back tears, he told an audience at a New Edition concert in Southhaven, MS. Sat. night, "I love you Whitney."

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog. Com and Cleveland Urban News.Com News.Com(www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) and (www.clevelandurbannews.com)

(EDITOR'S NOTE: CAN A MAN THAT BEATS YOU, LOVE YOU? READ THIS STORY)

BEVERLY HILLS, California-Famed pop singer Whitney Houston, the close cousin of music icon Dionne Warwick and ex wife of bad boy New Edition singer Bobby Brown, is dead at 48.

Houston was reportedly found by her brother in the bath tub of the California Beverly Hilton Hotel room where she was in town for a Grammy party at the hotel thrown by record producer and music industry executive Clive Davis, her longtime mentor who discovered her talent, nurtured it, and molded her into a star. She will be remembered during a special segment sung by Jennifer Hudson at tonight's Grammy Awards.

Police said that Houston was found dead at 3:55 pm Sat. afternoon and could not be revived following a 911 call from hotel security.

According to police, there were no immediate signs of foul play and the only drugs found in Houston's hotel room were reportedly prescription drugs, though an investigation is underway around the propriety of those drugs, including subpoenas to Houston's doctors.

Autopsy reports are not expected for at least three weeks.

Also an actress and producer who starred opposite Kevin Cosner in the hit motion picture "The Body Guard," and opposite actresses Loretta Devine and Angela Bassett in the popular women's liberating film "Waiting To Exhale," Houston rose to fame in 1985 with the Grammy winning "Saving All My Love For You," a song on the multiplatinum album "Whitney Houston, which had a string of other billboard hits like "You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All," a remake of the George Benson hit.

She had ties to Cleveland and knew through Warwick and as a family friend, renowned boxing promoter Don King, a Cleveland native who publishes the Call and Post Newspaper, Cleveland's Black press.

She won six Grammys, 30 NAACP image awards, an Emmy, and a host of other awards and commendations.

Probably the song most memorable that Houston brought her fans is "I Will Always Love You," a tune that soared the top of the charts too , and was the theme of her love movie with Costner, whom she kisses in the end, marking an interracial embrace between two sex symbols that peaked the public's interest. And she hit the charts with her popular 90s rendition of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman, sparking women to feel more confident about being women, and during a time when the nation's women's movement was more vibrant.

One of the world's best selling artists, she sold 170 million albums, cd's, videos and singles worldwide.

The third child and only daughter of John Houston, a retired army man and small time entertainment executive, and gospel singer Sissy Houston, Whitney Houston grew up middle class in Newark, NJ., and in the baptist church where she sang solos in the youth choir.

Her parents later divorced and her father remarried, dying in 2003 at 82 years old of diabetes and heart disease.

He had sued his daughter in 2000 over a contract dispute over money as her one-time manager, something that reportedly caused heighten tension in the singer's life as she battled substance abuse that saw her career spiral downwards in the late 1990's. And after her father's death she feuded with her stepmother Barbara Houston, who unsuccessfully sued after her husband's death claiming that while Houston was sole beneficiary of her father's $1 million life insurance policy, his estate required that the proceeds go to payoff the mortgage on their condominium, a claim met by a counter suit from the singer-actress for 1.6 million.

Houston married New Edition singer and soulful crooner Bobby Brown in 1992 and together they have an 18-year-old daughter, Bobbie Kristina Brown, who was rushed by ambulance to the hospital earlier today due to stress over her mother's death and later released.

But with the Houston-Brown marriage came turmoil and strife, with Brown in and out of jail for DUI, domestic violence charges lodged by Houston, and failing to pay child support on some of his then three children with other women before his marriage to the pop star.

Reported physical fights between the couple often overshadowed any good in the relationship, coupled with Brown's infidelity, and widespread publicity about their drug use that Houston announced publicly in a now infamous ABC interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002.

During that interview she told Sawyer that "crack is whack" and that she did real cocaine, a gesture, coupled with sometimes bizarre episodes caught on camera and video by the paparazzi, that made her life and musical career fodder for tabloid newspapers.

Still, she was loved, and admired as the princess of pop for her generation, pioneering the way for popular pop singers like Christina Auguilera and Beyonce.

She divorced the abusive Brown in 2007, something people pulling for her celebrated, and she tried serveral times to make a come back.

But she could not reinvent her mega successes of the mid 1980s and 1990s.

Brown told an audience of music goers that came to hear him and other members of the revitalized New Edition perform Sat. night at a concert in Southhaven, MS. that he still loved Houston.

"I love you Whitney," he said to a somber audience, while choking back tears.

Houston's family has arranged an invitation only funeral service and burial in her hometown of Newark, NJ.

Reach Kathy Wray Coleman by email at kathy@kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, and by telephone at 216-932-3114.