Whitney Houston’s mom to write ‘inside story’

Whitney Houston’s mother wants “to set the record straight” about her daughter with a memoir to be published in February, a HarperCollins executive said Tuesday.

The book written by Cissy Houston will “go behind the headlines to show the true, human side of this strong, successful yet complicated musical icon,” Lisa Sharkey said in the publisher’s announcement.

Cissy Houston, who is a Grammy-winning singer in her own right, said she wanted to “give her fans something to treasure, the way we all treasured Whitney.”

“When I lost my daughter Nippy, the world lost one of the most beautiful voices and an extraordinarily beautiful and charitable woman,” Houston said.

Whitney Houston drowned in a hotel tub February 11, with “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use” as contributing factors, the coroner ruled.

The book will explore Houston’s turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown and “her misunderstood struggles with drug abuse with a candor, honesty and respect that have long been missing in numerous accounts of her daughter’s life,” the HarperCollins statement said.

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“Cissy Houston is known for being so guarded and so caring that until now she has never spoken about her daughter,” Sharkey said. “But she is also so determined to set the record straight about her beautiful ‘Nippy’ that she decided to write this book.”

It will “undoubtedly be the definitive book by the only person capable of telling the true inside story of Whitney Houston’s life, her phenomenal successes, her desperate struggles and her private passions,” she said.

Some of the profits from the untitled book, which is set for publication February 15, will go to New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, where Cissy Houston served as minister of music for 50 years, the publisher said.