L.A. Reid has been promoting his new memoir, “Sing To Me,” lately and while doing so, he’s let several cats outta the bag, so to speak. This time around he revealed that when Whitney was signed to Arista Records (where he was the President), there came a time where he realized that he’d “failed” Whitney 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 some serious damage to Whitney’s reputation and career because that’s when Whitney told Diane the now infamous words, “Crack is wack.” The media ran with her quote and our beloved, Whitney was never able to live that down. L.A. confessed that during that interview is when he instantly realized just how bad of a drug problem Whitney actually had at that time.
Here 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…

Respect to L.A. for confessing where he felt he went wrong with the handling of Whitney’s career. We all remember watching Whitney on that interview and soon realizing that was the beginning of her demise, but it was also at that moment, that us true Whitney Houston fans realized that she was a human, who had flaws, just like the rest of us regular folks. 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.