The following is an excerpt from an interview with Antonio "L.A." Reid in The Hollywood Reporter:
THR: Whitney Houston's new album is already getting positive radio buzz. In the current business climate, there is a lot of pressure to hit high first-week sales numbers. How will that affect an artist like Houston?
Reid: Because now we judge the business on the first week of sales for an artist, Whitney has never been a first-week artist -- she's always been more of a marathon runner than a sprint runner. So she can come in and sell 150,000-200,000 records, and people will consider that not successful. She's sell 10 million at the end of the day, but because of the first week, they still won't recognize it as a success.
