In showing one of the most dramatic moments of Whitney Houston's career, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" gets a couple of its wires crossed. In the film, Houston attends the 1988 Soul Train Awards hoping to walk away with some major recognition. Unfortunately, she not only loses out on the Best Music Video award to Janet Jackson, she also gets a chorus of boos from the audience, many of whom accuse Houston of selling out to white audiences. The scene is heartbreaking, but it's also not exactly accurate.
In real life, Houston did lose out to Jackson in 1988, but she didn't actually attend the award ceremony that year. Despite not being there, the crowd did still give Houston a negative reaction (clips still exist on YouTube), and that energy didn't go away after 1988. The next year Houston did make her way to the ceremony, and her experience there was much closer to what the movie depicted. In 1989 Houston lost in the R&B Soul Single category to Anita Baker, got booed by a portion of the audience, and met her future husband Bobby Brown (per Essence).
The Soul Train Awards might not have been all that welcoming to Houston in the late 80s, but in 2000 she was named Female Artist of the Decade, so she eventually got the recognition that she deserved.
