Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston’s ex-husband, is the latest person to call out Kanye West and Pusha-T for their choice of album art for Pusha’s latest album, DAYTONA. The photo features Houston’s bathroom strewn with drugs and drug paraphernalia, and Brown, who was married to Houston from 1992 to 2007, said the choice was “in really bad taste.”
"That's really disgusting that he would do that," Brown told Rolling Stone. "That's in really bad taste. Something should happen to Kanye. He's already crazy. I knew that when I first met him. Now he's pushing the bar a little bit. He needs somebody to slap him up or something. And I'm just the person to do it."
In interviews with Angie Martinez and Entertainment Weekly, Pusha outlined the process for getting the controversial photo on the cover of DAYTONA. Pusha had already chosen another photo as the cover when Kanye called him in the middle of the night proposing the change. Pusha thought the $85,000 licensing fee for the photo was too high, but Kanye insisted and paid for it himself.
Brown isn’t the first family member to call out Kanye and Pusha for their decision. Damon Elliott, Houston’s cousin who once worked with Kanye West, said the photo was “took [him] right back to six years ago,” when Houston died in a bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2012 with a combination of drugs and alcohol in her system. "To do something for a publicity stunt to sell records, it's absolutely disgusting. It's petty. It's tacky," he said.
“I didn’t think [Kanye West would] go this far in invading someone’s family privacy,” Elliott added. “[Kanye is] 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.”
In addition, on Tuesday, the Houston estate issued a statement saying it was “extremely disappointed in Kanye’s choice.”
"Even in Whitney's death, we see that no one is exempt from the harsh realities of the world," the estate added.
