When L.A. Reid was promoting his then-new memoir in 2016, “Sing To Me,” he let several cats outta the bag, so to speak. One of them was the time he recalled the time when Whitney Houston was signed to Arista Records (where he was the President), he realized that he’d “failed” her in a major way, and he still regrets it to this day. L.A.’s regret is that he allowed Whitney Houston to do the interview that he set up with Diane Sawyer back in the day, which ultimately caused serious damage to Whitney’s reputation and career. Why? Because that’s when Whitney told Diane her now infamous phrase, “Crack is wack.” The media ran with her quote and our beloved Whitney was never able to live that down.
L.A. confessed it was during that interview, that he instantly realized just how bad of a drug problem Whitney actually had at that time. Below is what he told Wendy Williams about that interview and Whitney’s “crack” quote:
“I didn’t really know…I was so naive. I didn’t realize that there was an issue. I said let’s get Whitney with Diane Sawyer and promote the album.
She [Diane Sawyer] asked her the question about substance abuse and when Whitney said, ‘crack is whack,’ my mouth dropped. I felt like I really failed her. My job is to protect talent and try to present them in a way that people will love them. My job is not to drum up controversy or drum up gossip. My job is to present them in the best possible way, so I COMPLETELY failed her that day.”
Check out what else L.A. said about that here…
Although that interview was an extremely sad thing to witness, in a way, it probably lifted somewhat of a burden off of Whitney’s shoulders, because the “Perfect Patti/pop princess” image that had been created for her, by her label and marketing team, was almost too much for any person to live up to.
