It has almost been 20 years since the release of TLC‘s 3rd masterpiece, ‘FanMail‘, in February 1999.
The first thing that stood out about the album before hearing any of the music was the eye-catching, stunning, futuristic visuals, which features T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli each shown with a metallic silver skin tone.
Fans can be forgiven for thinking the silver-skinned effects were digitally enhanced and created with computer trickery on the album cover.
But the reality is, the girls were actually physically painted silver on the Seb Janiak photoshoot in 1998!
Music executive Shanti Das shared an insightful throwback photo on her Instagram of herself onset with TLC, whilst they were in the process of being painted silver for the futuristic look, which set the tone for the album’s pre-millenium feels.
The girls have touched on how the silver painted photoshoot went down in the past, with T-Boz even admitting that the paint made her skin break out!
“We were sprayed silver, I wanted us to look like robots“, T-Boz explains to a fan on Twitter. “It sure was itchy“.
Chilli also gave an insight on her own experiences with being painted silver for the Grammy winning project, stating that ‘FanMail’ is her favorite album cover!
“We we’re covered in silver paint that took months to get all out!” Chilli exclaims. “I was in the shower for 2 hours and still didn’t get it all off“.
The photoshoot remains a fan favorite, so we can only hope the girls felt it was worth the sacrifice for such an iconic and groud breaking visual moment in music history!
‘FanMail‘ ensured TLC continued to be the trendsetters that they always have been in their career. The first to try out new ideas and the results were a success!
June 3, 2018: the date that became one of the most important dates of the year for most British fans of the biggest selling US girl group of all time, TLC.
Not only was it the second time TLC had performed in the UK in their 26-year career (the first show being as recent as 2017 at KOKO in London on May 9th), but this date served as the first time the ladies had performed at a UK festival, ever!
TLC had the pleasure of being chosen as the headline act at this years Mighty Hoopla festival, held at Brockwell Park in South London, which serves exclusively as TLC’s only show in the UK in 2018.
This is one of a very few occasions where a female act has been selected to headline a major music festival. Times are changing, for the better. Kudos to Mighty Hoopla for giving the girls the opportunity.
The weather held out beautifully the whole day, bringing out the best of the festival, maintaining the high spirits and eclectic atmosphere amongst the attendees.
The festival line-up boasted a female-majority roster of established artists with varied music genres, including Nadine Coyle (Girls Aloud), Louise (Eternal), Lily Allen, Belinda Carlisle and Spice Girls‘ Melanie C, who paid a loving tribute to Left Eye before performing their UK #1 duet, 2000’s “Never Be The Same Again“.
Melanie C with TLC
8:30PM dawned shortly after Lily Allen’s hour long set, blessing us with the main attraction: T-Boz and Chilli, with Left Eye laced effortlessly throughout the performance, in the form of photo collages and her original raps, left to play out in her memory.
From the start, the girls, both donned in beautiful golden toned outfits, set the tone of what to expect; a powerful, high energized trip down memory lane, opening with their debut 1992 hits, “What About Your Friends?” and “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg“.
They took it down a notch with the smooth “Diggin’ On You“, before upping the anté with the club anthem “Silly Ho“, slightly revamped to feature a modern beat sample from the Kendrick Lamar 2017 hit “Humble“. It went down a treat. The crowd went wild .
Rather than giving a male audience member the usual “Red Light Special” lap dance on stage, Chilli opted to invite rapper Q-Boy to dance with her during her bridge.
They took it back to 1992 with “Baby-Baby-Baby“, before diving straight back into 2017, with the anti-bully track “Haters” from their latest album.
The self-love anthem “Unpretty” came next, with the audience singing their hearts out in unison, before the girls took a short break to allow the dancers and band to show and highlight their talents.
The set features a new set of vibrant visuals, produced by the hip-hop choreography duo Nappytabs (Napoleon and Tabitha D’umo), the team behind the Jennifer Lopez Las Vegas residency and television show So You Think You Can Dance?
The opening trumpets in the Grammy winning #1 single “Creep” lit up the stage and set the tone for the excellence that followed. New track “It’s Sunny” was next, with it’s infectious chorus and Earth, Wind & Fire sample.
TLC gave their 2017 hit “Way Back” a 2018 remix, with a catchy ‘TLC’ chant and a sample of the 2001 hit “The Next Episode” by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, the latter of whom features on the song with the girls.
Chilli asked the audience if she could talk for a minute. As soon as she mentioned her frustration at guys who try to talk to her from the passengers side, the whole crowd was sent into a frenzy, as they knew it was time for “No Scrubs“!
Factors beyond their control meant their set time was delayed, therefore they couldn’t perform beyond the venues curfew, omitting the ode to the fans “Joy Ride” and “Fan Mail“.
That didn’t dent the flow of the night, as they launched into the show finalé, and Left Eye’s favorite song, “Waterfalls“, with the audience singing along loud and proud with the girls.
They bowed and thanked us all for being there, while Chilli hung around a little longer throwing love heart shapes with her hands even when the music had stopped.
Credit: Victoria Ling
One thing is for sure, after this much love from across the pond, this will not be the last time TLC will be touching down on British soils. They love us, as much as we love them.
Now, fans in South Africa have had their dreams answered today (May 29), when tour promoters Glen 21 announced to the world that TLC are heading to their part of the world this September!
The girls will be performing as part of this years Soul Fest 2018, and will feature exclusive sets by fellow 90s musicians Dru Hill and SWV.
The dates will take the ladies on a 3 city tour through Johannesburg (Sept 1), Durban (Sept 2) and Cape Town (Sept 4).
Prices range from as little as 490 ZAR up to 1500 ZAR for the VIP treatment!
Salt N Pepa talked to Paper Magazine back in 2015 about their feelings towards TLC during the 90s and the legacy of Left Eye!
Pepa: I remember hearing the group’s music for the first time and we were like “Who are these three new girls coming out?” It was brilliant because they’re R&B; singers, and then you had Lisa who was an emcee. I thought that was awesome, and I knew they were gonna be a hit and make timeless music. Lisa had the “it” factor and she was so free-spirited. That’s what reminded me of Salt-N-Pepa.
Salt: I’m very good at knowing the “it” factor when I see it. When I first saw Beyoncé I was like OMG diva yes! Same thing with TLC and Left Eye in particular. She stood out to me as a brazen, bold, in your face kind of individual. She really was that way in person and it showed on camera.
Their first video “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” struck me, and they also reminded me of Salt-N-Pepa, too. They were young, they were cute, they were about female empowerment, they said whatever they wanted to say. I fell in love with them from “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” so I wasn’t surprised that they went onto mega stardom.
Pepa: Their whole style, their attitude, they were very focused. I just knew this wasn’t going to be a one-hit-wonder. To this day, we still play “Scrubs” in our shows. We have to support each other at all times, support women like us.
Salt: I remember being on the set with them when we did a song together with Pebbles [Perri Reid] — they were Pebbles’ protegées — and we barely spoke. I don’t know if they were dumbstruck or fans, but women sometimes do that; we don’t approach each other in music, which I think is a crime.
Now that I’m a more mature woman, if I see another female celebrity, I’m going to go up to them and say “Hey girl what’s up.” But sometimes you get the I’m-a-bigger-star-than-you vibe, so you have to be open.
TLC in the Pebbles music video ‘Backyard’ featuring Salt N PepaSo I remember us not talking. Years later, Chilli, T-Boz, Pep, and myself did a photo shoot together. And Chilli brought up a time when we were at the Grammy’s and never spoke. She said, “We really looked up to you guys, and we were hurt that you guys didn’t even come up to us.” I was apologizing; I don’t know why that happens with women. We need to be banding together. I don’t feel [competitive] now as a mother and as a more mature person.
I think as Salt-N-Pepa we can be really instrumental in bringing women together in hip-hop and saying it doesn’t have to be like this. Coming up with Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah, it wasn’t like that. We were all really cool with each other. We were just a bunch of girls coming up in a male-dominated genre of music and we clicked with each other naturally.
Pepa: Now there’s so much more room for females in the industry with us showing that it could be done and with TLC showing that it could be done.
Salt:Women have been fighting to be heard and to be taken seriously in every area: business, music, it doesn’t matter. The struggle continues. Me and Pep are still finding ourselves in situations that I’m sure Left Eye had found herself in and I’m sure that’s why she was screaming. It was like, “I’m a black woman, and I matter.” Sometimes it may have been perceived as spoiled or like a tantrum, but it was really her saying, “see me, I’m not just an artist,” which is a struggle for me.
I’m a producer, I’m a writer, I compose music, I’m a mom. There are so many aspects to me besides being an artist, but sometimes in this business you have to fight to be seen as anything else. Sometimes you feel like a puppet, and I think that’s how she felt. She was not just a recording artist; she was an artist in many ways. We make up our video concepts, there’s so much stuff that we do that we don’t get recognized or credit for and it’s very frustrating.
I’ll tell a story that Russell Simmons doesn’t like: one time I was standing near him, and he didn’t know what Salt-N-Pepa looked like. Somebody happened to ask him what he thought of those Salt-N-Pepa girls and he was like thumbs down, not gonna last. Years later, he tried to sign us to Def Jam. But that’s how it is.
I always say desperation stinks. It’s a very smelly emotion. When you’re willing to say no, turn down money, and piss people off and not care that they call you a bitch, that breaks barriers. I love what Taylor Swift is doing. I’m not only a fan of the music, I’m a fan of her being a young woman who is going hard for what she feels she’s worth. You have to stand in your worth and be able to walk away.
At the end of the day you keep your self-respect and make a statement to the world. That takes a lot of courage because sometimes you’re wrong, but you still leave with your integrity. I was very immature when I was young. Left Eye did some immature things, but at the end of the day, she was saying, “I’m here, I’m important, I matter,” and that’s what I loved about her. She made her statement, she made her mark, and she’s unforgettable.
Pepa: She was very clear on her direction in life. You will definitely remember Left Eye: the eye-patch, the condoms on the shirt. She was just so alive and in your face with it. She was boisterous and had a good attitude that you need in this male-dominated world. She’ll never get lost.
Salt: To me, her legacy is to live out loud. She was authentic, she was herself, she was unapologetic about who she was. We would all like to be that way and sometimes we shy away from that because we’re afraid of being judged. She was judged, but she was willing to be judged. That’s what I really loved about her.
Anything that’s self-destructive, that’s chasing a waterfall. We wanted to make a song with a strong message – about unprotected sex, being promiscuous, and hanging out in the wrong crowd. The messages in Waterfalls hit home. I think that’s why it’s our biggest hit to date.
When it first went to radio, nobody got it. They didn’t understand what we were talking about. It needed the video to bring the words to life. Even I don’t think I really fell in love with the song until I saw it. The moment I did, I knew it would be a hit.
The timing was perfect. Organized Noize produced the track. They’d been working with Outkast and Goodie Mob and that funky, soulful sound that was their signature. CeeLo Green sang backing vocals – way before he was a big star. P Diddy did some interludes on the album, CrazySexyCool, too. But obviously, once our voices got on there, it became a TLC record.
The song made us much more relevant – not just a fun girl group. We were bringing awareness to subjects people were nervous talking about. It was groundbreaking for us: from then on, we were seen as the real deal.
We definitely wanted to be role models. We felt like a lot of females didn’t have other females pulling for them – so every song we put out was a girl-power song. We told it from a woman’s point of view. Women liked that and men respected it.
AIDs is still out there. You still have bullying. You still have drugs. But you have to continue to bring awareness so that people can become more responsible and want to do the right things. You can never have too many records like Waterfalls.
Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, singer and songwriter
I always loved what you’d call alternative music. Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, Duran Duran, Billy Idol. Bennie and the Jets by Elton John was my thing. I was born in Iowa and moved to Atlanta when I was a child.
Every time I tell people I’m from Iowa, they go: “There’s black people there?” I actually have a T-shirt that says: “Yes, there are black people in Iowa.”
I wanted Waterfalls to be our version of alternative music. When I heard an early version, I thought: “My god, this is perfect.” It was so left of what we’d done on our first album. It was amazeballs.
When we had finished recording it, we played it for Clive Davies, the big kahuna at the label. He was the boss of Arista, which distributed our label La Face. He didn’t like it. He said it was too deep. He didn’t think people would bump up the street to it.
So we went to LA Reid, who ran LaFace. We bought a giant poster and wrote on it: “Please believe in us, we’ll make the best video ever.” He went against Clive and put up the money. We called in F Gary Gray to direct the video.
The first time he showed us the concept – which showed a kid getting killed selling drugs and a guy contracting HIV – we started crying.
AIDS was an epidemic at the time. Not long after the song came out, I was doing a book-signing and a man came up to me and held my hand. “I didn’t kill myself because of you,” he said. “I felt like nobody understood. But I felt like you guys understood how people can end up in my situation.”
The day before recording, I’d been in a car with Lisa [“Left Eye” Lopes, who was killed in a car accident in 2002]. We saw a beautiful rainbow. That’s how her rap starts: “I seen a rainbow yesterday.” She’d been through a lot with the house burning down, she’d been locked up in the centre for drug and alcohol treatment.
That was serious, what she said was real. It was for herself and everyone else who had been down the wrong path, chased the wrong things. And she really did see that rainbow – and it made her feel good about life and remember how precious it is. That song still has meaning 25 years on.
I will never forget the day we filmed that video. I can’t swim. It was 6am and I’m on this little plastic thing in the middle of 80,000 tonnes of water, in the lake where they shot Jaws at Universal Studios. That’s why my feet are planted. I do not move. I was so worried about falling in.
When we showed the video to Clive, he was like: “I knew it would be great!” And we were looking at him like: “What? Hush up!” We eventually fired people and got out of our deal. We were so underpaid. We made a lot of people wealthy. Being a black woman in the industry means you have so much going against you.
I’m not fearful about anything. If I believe in something and want to to talk about it, then that’s what we’re doing. I’m just happy that we were able to succeed in what we set out to do – make a difference.
If you’re a fan of the hit FX show Atlanta, you’d have noticed something very CrazySexyCool about the latest episode.
Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Bryan Tyree Henry), andDarius(Lakeith Stanfield) were featured wearing familiar color-sequenced silky pajamas!
And as an added bonus, a deleted scene from this week’s episode just surfaced showing Earn, Paper Boi and Darius getting down to TLC‘s 1994 hit, “Creep”.
Director, Hiro Murai shared the clip of the deleted scene on his social media. “couldn’t leave this on the edit room floor #atlantafx,” he stated.
TLC sat down with Beats 1 on April 25, 2018, the 16th anniversary of the passing of the beloved Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.
On Cardi B Paying Them Homage
T-Boz: “I know she wore my outfits at the Grammys and she wore Lisa’s hair. It was our whole Grammys-TLC feel when we were on stage, and she said Left Eye on one song, and paid homage to TLC on another song — our “Creep” song and then our name, too. She did it twice and she also paid us love on our page. So a lot of love — it was awesome.”
On TLC’s Legacy
T-Boz: “It’s really an honor. You never think people are going to be — like, you always wish that, you want that. We would always say, ‘we want to be trendsetters. We want little girls to dress like us.’ But when you actually see them do it for Halloween, and have birthday parties, and generations — the grandma, the mom, and the daughter — all at the concerts. It’s really amazing. We’re blessed to be 25 years in, and people are still doing it.”
Chilli: “We are really blessed. And like she said, as an artist when you’re new coming out, your dream is to be able to have that type of effect — a positive one — on everybody, and to have that longevity. You don’t know if that’s going to be your story, so time tells that, and it has. It’s been 20 plus years, and even Bruno Mars, for that matter — the video that he had featuring Cardi B — it was almost like our “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” video, and he had on a TLC t-shirt! It’s amazing and it’s a blessing for us to see that. It makes us feel really good and lets us know, OK we did it right. We’re still doing it, so yes, it is awesome.”
On The Anniversary of Left Eye’s Passing
Chilli: “First of all, when you think of the word anniversary — I mean, I know that it’s a date that something took place. But when you think about that, you think of happy times.
When people celebrate the anniversary of a wedding, or a marriage, or a relationship of any kind, and it seems like to me it’s all something cheerful, and there’s nothing cheerful to me about her passing. I mean nothing. We don’t go out of our way to do anything like that. I mean, when her birthday comes around, yes, we talk about that, but not the death.”
T-Boz: “But we celebrate it all year round. I mean really because we always incorporate her in everything we do. We always keep her memory alive. We showcase the great things, like why people loved her. So yeah, like when anybody else’s mom or sister dies, I don’t know a lot of people who celebrate cake or anything.”
Leon@TLCArmy
![Pebbles Ft. Salt-N-Pepa - Backyard [Radio Edit]_1](https://tlcarmy.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/pebbles-ft-salt-n-pepa-backyard-radio-edit_1.gif?w=760)
