it also makes her transition to hard hip-hop diva seem sensible, instead of just a marketing move, by grounding it in something real." Keysha Davis from BBC Music thought that More Than a Woman would "sell bucket-loads." She praised Braxton for serving "both middle-of-the-road listeners with her high-powered ballads, as well the comrades of the streets with her attitude-ridden take on modern day living." While discussing the album's hip hop songs, Chris Willman from Entertainment Weekly wrote that "she has sudden hip-hop pretensions, it's low-key hip-hop, the electronic throbs provides a surprisingly suitable bed for her controlled boudoir cooing." While comparing the album between her previous release The Heat, he called it "hotter than her predominantly adult contemporary previous album" and concluded writing that the album "proves to be the singer's most consistent effort" since her self-titled 1993 debut album. Commercial performance More Than a Woman debuted and peaked at number 13 on the US Billboard 200, selling 98,000 copies in its first week. It marked Braxton's lowest opening sales for a non-Christmas-themed studio album up to then and was a considerable decline from her previous effort The Heat, which had opened to sales of 199,000 units in 2000. On Billboards component charts, it reached number five on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, becoming Braxton's first solo album to miss the top spot. In total, More Than a Woman sold 438,000 copies and was eventually certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for the shipment of over 500,000 copies in the United States. Elsewhere, More Than a Woman was unable to match the commercial success of Braxton's first three studio albums. While it failed to enter most international music markets, the album reached the top 40 of the German Albums Chart and debuted at number 23 on the Swiss Albums Chart. Braxton considered More Than a Woman a commercial "flop-flop." Disappointed by its underperformance and the little promotion activities Arista Records had arranged after releasing the first single "Hit the Freeway", Braxton requested her manager Barry Hankerson to obtain a release for her from any future recording obligations to the label. On March 14, 2003, Braxton issued a press statement saying she was leaving Arista for Hankerson's Universal-distributed Blackground Records, on which she released her sixth studio album Libra in 2005. In a 2012 interview with ABC News, Braxton expressed discontentment with the project when asked about