Whitney RIP

WHITNEY HOUSTON has died at the age of 48—just hours before her mentor Clive Davis was scheduled to throw his annual pre-Grammy party—her publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday. The cause and the exact location of her death are not yet known, but she was in L.A. and expected to attend the party. By the end of a career that had begun with virtually unprecedented success, Houston had become a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use, the AP noted in a story breaking the news. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once-pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime. "The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Bobby Brown by her side. It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone. In a tragic irony, the news of Houston’s death came right on the heels of a story in The Hollywood Reporter that said she had just been approached about becoming a judge on The X Factor. (2/11p)