Once apon a time there was a little girl in the ghetto (in my home ghetto, in fact) who wanted to be a princess. She had the talent (and, yes, beauty) to get away with it. She could sing with the range of her godmother and the articulation, the clarity of her cousin. She found that she could sing white songs in a very Black way. And so, she got the tiara and the castle. The Prince, however, brought out the ghetto in her that was hidden.  Monsters dwelled and haunted endlessly. And so she died from everything. (Whitney Houston, 1963-2012)