Whitney Houston Album Update

As Whitney Houston continues to ready her as-yet-untitled ‘comeback’ effort for a September 1st release (August 31st – UK), more details about the LP has surfaced via Showbiz 411 columnist Roger Friedman:

I told you earlier this week that Whitney’s album was done, and would be released by the Grammy deadline cut off of August 31, 2009.

Well, yesterday Arista Records confirmed it. There’s one weird hitch: the album will go on September 1st, one day after the deadline. I know, it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s a shipping thing, and the Grammys will allow a 24 hour grace period.

More importantly, here’s some news: Alicia Keys wrote and produced a track on the album for Whitney. Houston has been “working” Alicia for a couple of years, and it finally happened. The track is also produced by Alicia’s reported current love interest, the producer Swizz Beatz. (His real name is Kasseem Dean, by the way.)

There are tracks on Whitney’s album from Diane Warren, Stargate, and other top producers of the day. But the first single is set to be a David Foster production.

And yes, the track that was leaked last year with Akon, “Like I Never Left,” will be included in its finished form.

I am told, also, that the album is a combination of big, sweeping ballads and 80s dance music like Houston’s trademark hit, “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

So it looks like we will have new albums from Whitney and Mariah at the same time after all. It’s a flashback battle of the divas, circa 1994. Bring it on! {Source}

The Swizzy and Alicia production collabo sounds real interesting. As pertains the Akon collabo ‘Like I Never Left’, the song grew on me considerably after first hearing it; the airy, laidback nature of it feels apt for the impending summer period ahead. That said, I’m gonna need the final version of the song to see Nippy batting it out of the park with the vocals, because, the end aside, she was talking through most of the track. In any case, roll on September 1st, roll on!