Kelly Price Speaks Out On Whitney Houston's Death

On Thursday night, just two days before her death, Whitney Houston showed up at R&B singer Kelly Price's pre-Grammy celebration. The two old friends even sang a duet of "Yes, Jesus Loves Me."

Talking to Rolling Stone last night, Price – who was clearly struggling to control her emotions before succumbing to tears near the end of the interview – said that the song was a fitting one.

"She’s a church girl, she related to the church girl in me. I’m a church girl, I related to the church girl in her," Price said. "And at the end of the day, whatever was going on, our conversation could always go back to the foundation of our lives, starting out singing in church. And no matter what was going on we could always go back to that."

One of the reasons Price wanted to speak under the difficult circumstances was to address resurfacing rumors surrounding Houston's problems with addiction. Price wanted to talk about the Houston she saw Thursday night, not the troubled diva depicted in the media in recent years. The specific circumstances of Houston's death are still unknown, but reports surfaced Sunday that the singer may have drowned in the bathtub. Law enforcement officials at the scene Saturday evening said there was "nothing obvious at this time" for cause of death and ruled out foul play. Houston had been attending out-patient rehab program in May 2009 for drug and alcohol treatment.

"Things people want to allude to are not what I saw," Price said. "There was no craziness going on, absolutely none of it. It was a great musical event. And honestly, I’m saying it because her daughter was there with her, my two children were there with me. It was an atmosphere that lent itself to being okay for our kids to be there. So that’s what was going on."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kelly-price-remembers-whitney-houston-20120212#ixzz1mCoGEbAg