Source: Larry Busacca / Getty
The shade is reaching dangerous levels this week.
On Tuesday, April 25, 75-year-old legend Aretha Franklin decided to blast Dionne Warwick, one of her longtime frenemies, and get this — she did it by fax machine. That’s how you know you’re dealing with an OG.
Apparently, Dionne misspoke years ago at Whitney Houston‘s funeral when she told attendees Aretha was the late icon’s godmother. Aretha couldn’t be at the funeral due to swollen feet and a Radio City Music Hall gig that evening. But Dionne said of Aretha, “She loves Whitney as if she were born to her. She is her godmother.”
Whitney Houston’s actual godmother was singer Darlene Love, known for her holiday song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
Aretha felt the comment was damaging, telling the Associated Press five years after the funeral, “She blatantly lied on me … fully well knowing what she was doing.”
Aretha told the publication she didn’t speak on their beef sooner because “There’s been so much going on around her [Houston], around the service, around the drugs, around her and Bobby [Brown] supposed to be fighting, I didn’t want to add anything to that and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
She then spoke on an awkward run-in with Dionne at the Tribeca Film Festival last week. Aretha told AP of the moment, “She said, ‘Give me a hug.’ I said, ‘Oh hell no. You couldn’t be serious,’”
Aretha says their beef runs too deep for anything as simple as an apology to suffice now. “At this point it isn’t about an apology, it’s about libel,” she told the publication, adding “We’ve never been friends… and I don’t think that Dionne has ever liked me.”
Dionne’s rep said “She will not dignify a response to the statement made by Aretha Franklin.” Welp.
