TLC (group)

• 1. Introduction

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  TLC formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 1990, and within a few years had become one of the most commercially successful groups in American music history. Three young women, each going by a nickname that masked a real personality, would sell more than 60 million records and earn a diamond certification for an album that Rolling Stone placed among the greatest of all time. But the story of how Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas got there is stranger and more turbulent than the trophies suggest. How did a group that once earned less than $50,000 each per year, despite selling millions of albums, file for bankruptcy at the peak of their fame? What drove the member who would die before her 31st birthday to challenge her own bandmates in print? And how does a trio carry on as a duo, honoring a voice that can never be replaced?

• 2. Assembly in Atlanta

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  Record producer Ian Burke and a teenage client named Crystal Jones first sketched the concept for a hip-hop-inflected girl group in Atlanta in 1990, drawing inspiration from the sound of Bell Biv DeVoe. Jones recruited two more members: Tionne Watkins, originally from Des Moines, Iowa, and Lisa Lopes, a rapper who had just arrived from Philadelphia carrying a small keyboard and $750. The group called itself "2nd Nature" and began working with producers Jermaine Dupri and Rico Wade.

  A connection at the hair salon where Watkins worked opened a door to singer Perri "Pebbles" Reid, who ran her own company called Pebbitone. Reid renamed the group TLC after the initials of the three members' first names and arranged an audition with LaFace Records, the label co-founded by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Reid's then-husband Antonio "L.A." Reid. Antonio Reid liked Watkins and Lopes but believed Jones was not the right fit. According to Jones, the situation unraveled after Pebbles refused to let the group take the Pebbitone contracts home to review. Jones would not sign without independent counsel; Watkins's account differs, suggesting she and Lopes asked Jones to leave before contracts were finalized.

  On the 28th of February 1991, Watkins and Lopes signed production, management, and publishing deals with Pebbitone. Rozonda Thomas, who worked part-time as a backup dancer for LaFace act Damian Dame, joined in April 1991. To keep TLC's name intact as an acronym, Thomas took the nickname "Chilli", Lopes became "Left Eye", and Watkins became "T-Boz". The trio signed to LaFace in May, with distribution through Arista Records, and went into the studio with Edmonds, Austin, Dupri, and Marley Marl.

• 3. New Jill Swing

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  Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip arrived on the 25th of February 1992. The album blended Watkins's contralto, Thomas's mezzo-soprano, and Lopes's soprano raps into something observers immediately dubbed "new jill swing", borrowing the phrase from producer Teddy Riley's earlier new jack swing movement. Chiefly written by Dallas Austin and Lisa Lopes, the record leaned into playful, female-empowering lyrics, and its visual identity was distinctive: each member wore wrapped condoms on her clothing, with Lopes also displaying one over her left eye in a pair of glasses.

  The debut was certified quadruple-platinum in the United States and produced three top-ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including "Baby-Baby-Baby", which peaked at number two. Critics and commentators credited the album with opening the door for groups including SWV, Destiny's Child, and the Lopes-produced R&B trio Blaque.

  During TLC's first national tour, opening for MC Hammer, Lopes and Thomas learned that Watkins had sickle-cell anemia. Watkins had kept the diagnosis secret until she became severely ill while the group traveled through the southwest United States and had to be hospitalized. Lopes and Thomas stayed with her; some concerts were canceled. Watkins would eventually become a spokesperson for the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America in the late 1990s. At the end of that tour, all three members had received so little money that they decided to sever ties with Pebbles Reid as manager, though they remained bound to Pebbitone's production deal and Reid continued collecting a share of their earnings.

• 4. Diamond, Bankruptcy

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  Released on the 15th of November 1994, CrazySexyCool is where TLC's commercial story reached its apex and its financial collapse became impossible to ignore at the same time. The album reunited the group with Dallas Austin, Babyface, and Jermaine Dupri, and added producers Organized Noize, Chucky Thompson, and Sean "Puffy" Combs to the mix. Lopes had been released from a rehabilitation program to attend recording sessions, though the finished album featured significantly less of her voice than previous work.

  CrazySexyCool debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200, climbed to number three, and stayed on the chart for over two years. It sold more than 7.7 million copies in the United States alone and over 14 million worldwide, earning the RIAA's diamond certification. All four singles reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100. "Waterfalls", produced by Organized Noize with socially conscious lyrics addressing drug dealing and unsafe sex and a rap from Lopes, became the group's biggest hit. Its million-dollar video made TLC the first Black act to win the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. At the 38th Annual Grammy Awards the group took home Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group for "Creep".

  On the 3rd of July 1995, at the height of that success, TLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, disclosing debts totaling $3.5 million. Part of that debt traced to Lopes's insurance payments after the arson charge and Watkins's medical bills. But the primary cause was structural: under their 1991 contract, TLC received only 56 cents per album sold, split three ways, after Arista, LaFace, and Pebbitone had recouped recording costs, manufacturing, distribution, travel, hotels, promotion, videos, food, and clothing. Each member was clearing less than $50,000 a year. LaFace refused to renegotiate mid-contract. Two years of legal dispute followed before the cases settled in late 1996. TLC won a renegotiated deal with LaFace and bought the rights to their own name, which had previously been owned by Pebbles.

• 5. Left Eye's Challenge

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  FanMail, released in February 1999, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was certified six-time platinum by the RIAA. "No Scrubs" topped the singles charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. "Unpretty", the album's second single, wove in folk and alternative rock textures and became TLC's fourth number-one on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards, FanMail received eight nominations and won three, including Best R&B Album. The FanMail Tour's pay-per-view special became the highest-grossing televised pay-per-view special of its kind at the time.

  Behind those numbers, Lisa Lopes was growing frustrated. Her contributions to songs had been reduced to periodic eight-bar raps, and several tracks carried no vocals from her at all. Studio singers such as Debra Killings filled the background parts Lopes wanted to sing. Late in 1999, Entertainment Weekly published a letter Lopes had written directly challenging Watkins and Thomas: "I challenge Tionne 'Player' Watkins (T-Boz) and Rozonda 'Hater' Thomas (Chilli) to an album entitled The Challenge... a 3-CD set that contains three solo albums. Each (album)... will be due to the record label by the 1st of October 2000... I also challenge producer Dallas 'The Manipulator' Austin to produce all of the material and do it at a fraction of his normal rate. As I think about it, I'm sure LaFace would not mind throwing in a $1.5 million prize for the winner."

  The three members eventually reconciled, and The Challenge was never recorded. Lopes instead pursued her solo debut, Supernova, which was released in Europe. Her sole single from it, "The Block Party", reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart but underperformed in the United States, and the North American release was canceled. In 2000, a collaboration with Spice Girls member Melanie C on "Never Be the Same Again" gave Lopes an international number-one hit in multiple countries. On the 1st of August 2001, TLC performed "Waterfalls" at MTV's 20th anniversary party in New York City, which would prove to be their final performance as a trio.

• 6. After Left Eye

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  On the 25th of April 2002, Lisa Lopes died in a car crash while filming a documentary in Honduras. That footage was eventually released in 2007 on VH1 as The Last Days of Left Eye. After a two-week hiatus, Watkins, Thomas, and Dallas Austin chose to complete TLC's fourth album, titled 3D. Lopes had already recorded vocals for three songs; two appeared on the standard version. Additional tracks incorporated unused vocals from previously unreleased Lopes material, and several songs served as direct eulogies. 3D was released on the 12th of November 2002.

  The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 and was certified twice platinum in the United States. It performed better in Japan, reaching number two there and earning a platinum certification from the RIAJ for 200,000 copies sold. The lead single, "Girl Talk", peaked at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, the lowest chart position any TLC lead single had reached. Its video placed Watkins and Thomas in live-action segments while Lopes appeared only in animation.

  In June 2003, at an annual concert held at Giants Stadium, TLC played what was announced as their final performance. Introduced by Britney Spears and Carson Daly, the duo showed a video montage of Lopes and then performed against footage of her singing the same songs in the same outfits. Despite that farewell framing, Watkins and Thomas never fully stopped. In 2004 they launched R U the Girl, a UPN reality series to find a collaborator, making clear that the winner would not become a permanent TLC member. Roughly 4.1 million viewers watched the season finale on the 20th of September 2005.

• 7. A Fifth Album and Legacy

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  On the 19th of January 2015, Watkins and Thomas announced a Kickstarter campaign for their fifth and final album, asking fans for a minimum pledge of $5 toward a $150,000 goal. In under 48 hours they passed that goal, becoming the fastest-funded pop project in Kickstarter history. Contributors included New Kids on the Block, who donated $10,000, and Katy Perry, who gave $5,000. The campaign ultimately raised $400,000. Their fifth studio album, TLC, arrived on the 30th of June 2017 via their own independent label 852 Musiq, distributed through RED Distribution.

  The group's recognition has compounded over time. VH1 ranked TLC the greatest female group overall and placed them 12th among the 100 Greatest Women in Music. Billboard named them the seventh-most-successful act of the entire 1990s. CrazySexyCool earned a 12-times-platinum RIAA certification in October 2019, reflecting decades of continued sales. The RIAA counts 23 million certified album sales for the group in the United States. Rolling Stone's David A. Keeps credited TLC with pioneering "a deft blend of acoustic and computer sounds" and noted that whether they were addressing AIDS in "Waterfalls" or female self-esteem in "Unpretty", they carried serious topics to the top of the pop charts.

  Beyonce, lead singer of Destiny's Child, said that TLC "influenced just about every female group that's out there now". Vibe called CrazySexyCool "the blueprint for female ensembles to follow". TLC and the Chicks remain the only two female ensembles to hold RIAA diamond certifications. In 2022 the group was inducted into the Black Music and Entertainment Walk of Fame, and in June 2023 a two-hour documentary, TLC Forever, premiered on Lifetime and A&E, executive produced by Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams.