TLC were honored with an exclusive Mural dedication and art expedition on October 9, 2022 in their home city of Atlanta, GA. The event served as part of Atlanta’s 2022 ELEVATE Open Spaces Art Festival.
Good As Burgers, Can I Kick Itand Press Play Entertainmentwere the hosts of the community block party and outdoor art mural dedication to multi-platinum, award-winning R&B recording group TLC. The event highlighted Atlanta’s music scene and art culture while bringing awareness to significant issues affecting the community.
This was the first public art mural dedicated to the legendary group in their hometown of Atlanta. As well as the mural unveiling event, there was also a free VIP Experience before the festivities. Creative agency CAN I KICK IT were the hosts of an interactive art and merchandise experience for VIP registrants featuring lots of TLC personal memorabilia, art pieces, merchandise and displays of other notable hip-hop artists from the Atlanta scene.
Attendees were treated to some performances by rapper Neshanycee and a special dance performance by the D4YL Kids, choreographed by the former TLC dancer Naeemah MC, who also did a phenomenal dance off performance!
BabyFaceBud presents TLC, Reigndrop and Snow with their gifts
Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas finally graced the stage after being introduced by King K of the Crown ME Empire served as the event MC host. Friends and peers of TLC took some time to pay homage to the legends including Inga S Willis, Shanti Das, Ian Burke, Ryan Cameron and Mayor of Atlanta Andre Dickens.
“It’s just crazy. I’m excited to see what this looks like,” Ian Burke told The Atlanta Voice. “New York immortalizes their heroes all the time, it’s about time that Atlanta follows suit. There are a lot of people that have influenced the nation worldwide. It’s important that our heroes are immortalized in this way.”
TLC and their closest friends and family with the mural revealArtist Shawn Stewart gifts his portrait to TLC
Long-time TLC fan Allon Plummer also spoke with the publication. “I’ve been a die-hard fan since I was a child, I am currently 37 years old and they were the first people I saw on VH1 and fell in love with them,” Plummer said. “This mural is another chapter in history. They have impacted everything from safe sex to how to stand up for your beliefs.”
TLC fan Allon Plummer & T-Boz
The talented BudBox creator De’Anthony aka BabyFaceBud presented a set of exclusive and individually personalized plaques to T-Boz, Chilli, and a 3rd plaque made for Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was accepted by her sister, Reigndrop Lopes, and was gifted to Lisa’s best friend, Trena Smith and god daughter Jakia “Snow” Smith.
Talented artist Shawn Stewart presented an exclusive portrait of TLC on stage to T-Boz and Chilli, and vowed to create another portrait so that they don’t have to share the one he made. Another talented artist from Atlanta Jerell Gantt lent his talents to the event and commemorated the occasion with a unique set of TLC portraits. The resin portraits and prints are available to purchase HERE for a limited time.
T-Boz and Chilli (TLC)
The crowd cheered after a countdown to reveal the incredible TLC mural dedication, created by Dan Stone. The mural was based on the Seb Janiak futuristic photo shoot, which was used as the iconic front cover for their Grammy award-winning ‘FanMail‘ album in 1999.
The Atlanta-based LaFace Records had high hopes for their supergroup TLC after the multi-platinum success of their debut album, ‘Ooooooohhh… on the TLC tip‘ in 1992 and were keen to surpass the sales with the follow-up release, 1994’s ‘CrazySexyCool‘.
That diamond-certified album was led by the single that blessed the group with their first Billboard #1 single, “Creep“. However, the LaFace Records label head Antonio “L.A.” Reid was very close to not going ahead with the track as a single at all, after a few subpar attempts at funding a music video to bring the single to life.
TLC, L.A Reid and Pebbles (1992)
The first music video for “Creep” that Reid commissioned in 1994 was directed by Craig Henry (responsible for directing “Flavor In Ya Ear” by Craig Mack) and was shot on location in Atlanta. Not feeling satisfied with the outcome of the video he went ahead and hired Lionel C. Martin to shoot the second attempt in Los Angeles. Martin had previously directed TLC videos including the debut single, “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg“, it’s follow-up, “What About Your Friends?“, and “Get It Up” from the Janet Jackson movie soundtrack, ‘Poetic Justice‘ in 1993.
After spending so much money on two music videos that didn’t do the single very much justice, Reid turned to his friend Sean “Diddy” Combs for some advice. Speaking with the Questlove Supreme podcast earlier this week, Reid admitted he was ready to pull the plug on the single release of “Creep” after feeling ’embarrassed’ about his failed attempts at securing a successful music video.
“We shot a video for “Creep” — it wasn’t very good. I was like, ‘damn’. So, we shot a second video for “Creep”, again wasn’t very good, so I was like, ‘fu*k, now I’m in trouble”, Reid reveals. “We shot two videos and they weren’t good and the world never saw them. I was embarrassed so I switched singles. “Creep” is no longer the single, so we’re gonna go with this song called “Kick Your Game” that Jermaine Dupri did”.
T-Boz, L.A Reid and Left Eye (1996)
Clive Davis, head of Arista Records and parent company to LaFace Records put his foot down after hearing Reid’s plan to change singles. “Hold it, hold it hold it! Why are you changing singles? What is this? What is behind this, you have to explain!” Dallas Austin, the producer of “Creep” was also unhappy with Reid not wanting to release his track as the first single. “He knew he had a great record, so I had to come clean”, Reid admits. “Well, truth be told, I made two horrible videos and I’m just too embarrassed to tell everybody. Clive just said, ‘get it right’.”
“So, I’m sitting with Diddy one day at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York, and I play him the TLC video that’s not good. He looks at me like, ‘oh my God, yo, this is horrible’, which does not make me feel any better about it”, Reid continues. “While I’m showing him the video on one television, on the other television was a video with Salt ‘N Pepa and En Vogue called “Whatta Man“, and it looks way better that our video. I looked at the video and said, ‘Who directed that?!’ It was Matthew Rolston. I called Matthew and asked him to do the “Creep” video — we got it right the third time. But we threw two videos away to get to the good one”.
When he was questioned if TLC had to pay back the costs for all of the music videos shot for “Creep”, Reid coyly responded. “Let’s look at it like this, we sell ten million albums — if you want the truth, I don’t know! That’s how I got my ass in trouble, because I didn’t know”, he admits. “I’m so good trying to make a great record, trying to get a great video, I’m spending people’s money and not realising it”.
While TLC held down the girl group side of the label, Outkast were the Kings of LaFace Records. Reid admits that hip-hop wasn’t his territory, so he put his faith in his artists like Outkast and Goodie Mob and what they brought to the table with guidance from Rico Wade of Organized Noize. When Outkast reached multi-platinum success with the ‘Stankonia‘ album, their working partnership became distanced before the next multi-platinum album was released, 2003’s ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below‘, which was a combination of two solo albums by the Outkast members, Big Boi and Andre 3000.
Chilli in Outkast’s “So Fresh So Clean” video
Similarities to this project were notable to the TLC solo album challenge that Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes had proposed to her group members Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas late in 1999, when Lopes felt her talent was not being utilised in the group the way she had wanted, so she wanted to present herself more freely with a solo project. Although her TLC sisters rejected the idea, Lopes continued her solo journey with the release of her debut solo album, ‘Supernova‘ in 2001, a project Reid admits he wasn’t blown away by.
Reid stated that the TLC solo challenge didn’t get very far as the group were stronger together as a unit. “T-Boz had made a couple of solo songs [“Touch Myself” (1996) and “My Getaway” (2000)], and it was pretty clear to me that it was the ensemble that was the magic”, Reid admits. “I love T-Boz — I love them all but I have a particular love for her style, that raspy voice, she was the only girl I’ve seen approach it like a guy — I just thought she was so dope. But it was the ensemble that was the winner there. Lisa made a solo album before she passed away — may she rest in peace, I miss her so much.”
“She made a solo album — I wasn’t blown away by it. I didn’t think it was incredible at all. It was the kind of music that — I should have loved it if it were good”, Reid states his thoughts on the ‘Supernova’ project. “It wasn’t something that was outside of my thing. The way I describe Goodie Mob as outside of my thing, so I have to defer to them. [‘Supernova’] wasn’t outside of my sweet spot, I just didn’t think it was great. Chilli didn’t actually try to make a solo record as far as I can remember until many, many years later. So that [solo challenge] didn’t get very far”.
Despite Reid’s dissatisfaction in the Lopes solo project, he released the album overseas in the UK, Australia and Japan. On Lisa’s birthday May 27, 2022, her youngest sister Reigndrop Lopes announced that the Lopes family were aiming to release the ‘Supernova’ album to streaming platforms on August 16 as Lisa had originally wanted.
TLC in 1994 (Dah Len)
Reid reveals the secret to how he brought out the best of each of the producers for the ‘CrazySexyCool’ album and that he took a step back from music production to focus on the business side of the label whilst his LaFace partner Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds continued with the writing and production side.
“I had all of the producers on ‘CrazySexyCool’ competing and they didn’t really know it. I had Dallas working on it first, he was the architect, then I go and play it for Jermaine Dupri and go, ‘I know you can beat this’, then he did his piece”, Reid admits. “Then Kenny is competitive. You don’t need to put a battery in Kenny’s back, he’s so competitive so he sent his songs in. And then, I went to Rico Wade last and said, ‘here’s what everybody else gave me, what you got?’
“And he came up with “Waterfalls“.
Would you have liked a TLC triple solo album? Did you like the early “Creep” videos?
Kandi Burruss of the 90’s R&B girl group Xscape and most recently known as a long-term cast member on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, opened up to Entertainment Weekly this week about some of the mega-hits that she has helped to carve out for other artists during her Xscape downtime.
Along with her group member Tameka “Tiny” Harris, the duo penned a number of Billboard number one hits and Grammy Award winning singles, most notably for their girl group peers, “Bills, Bills, Bills” for Destiny’s Child, and before that, the worldwide record-breaking “No Scrubs” for TLC.
Kandi reflects on the moment record label boss LA Reid got hold of her “No Scrubs” demo, produced by Shek’spere, and immediately wanted it for TLC. “I was like, ‘Cool. Let them have it’, because I always wanted to write for other artists, I just didn’t know how to do it”, Kandi admits.
She then touches on the subtle rivalry the industry placed on girl groups. It was also no secret that Jermaine Dupri wanted himself a group like TLC, and would guide Kandi to sing low like T-Boz. “There’s always that low-key rivalry thing that would go around in the industry. It was like, ‘How are you going to get somebody else to let you write for them, and you’re in a whole other girl group?'”
Despite “No Scrubs” being hugely successful and remains her biggest writing credit to date, Kandi admits that she wasn’t completely sure if the song would make it on the 1999 ‘FanMail‘ album at all.
The main reason for Kandi’s uncertainty was the fact that “No Scrubs” marked the first time the roles had switched on a TLC single, with Chilli leading the vocals on the track instead of the regular formula of T-Boz on lead vocals.
“They were going back and forth on what they wanted to do with the song because that’s the first song that Chilli sang lead on. So that’s why I wasn’t really sure if that song was going to be a first single, or even a single at all. Normally, T-Boz was the lead, so I didn’t know if they were going to keep it”, Kandi said.
LA Reid later ran into Kandi at a party and promised her that he was going to make “No Scrubs” the biggest writing hit of her career. “I’m looking at him like, ‘Okay.’ But in my mind I was thinking, ‘Well Xscape, we’ve had some big records… Whatever you say.’ But he wasn’t lying. He was serious, and he really did.”
Chilli did her thing on “No Scrubs” and helped the song to go down in history as the biggest female anthem in the world, that men can also relate to! The song took on a life of it’s own and Left Eye once called it ‘a national anthem’!
Switching up the vocal format was a smart idea which helped to keep TLC fresh and on top of their game.
Which other TLC songs would you want the girls to have fun with? T-Boz leads on “No Scrubs”? Chilli on “Waterfalls” leads? Let us know!
Despite the entertainment industry being forced to be put on hold during the global pandemic, the ladies of TLC have been given some time to focus on other projects that they were previously negotiating but were always pushing back because of major touring opportunities that took priority.
TLC finally decided to reveal to Rolling Stone that they are producing an all-new documentary! The two-hour special, titled ‘Biography: TLC‘, will chronicle the journey of the top-selling girl group throughout their career in the Nineties and beyond, featuring interviews with surviving members T-Boz and Chilli. ‘Biography: TLC’ will be directed by Matt Kay, and executive-produced by Roger Ross Williams (The Apollo) and his production company with Geoff Martz, One Story Up.
In addition to the stories that we all know and love in previous documentaries such as VH1’s ‘Behind The Music’, MTV’s ‘BIO Rhythm’, ‘Life In 3D’, and the Netflix special, ‘Once In A Lifetime Sessions‘, there is going to be some exclusive stories in ‘Biography: TLC’ that the public have never heard before and it will feature insights to the girls lives that the public have never seen before.
“The Biography banner has always focused on telling the stories of remarkable people who have had a major impact on our collective culture,” A&E Network EVP and head of programming Elaine Frontain Bryant said. “As a revolutionary group that broke boundaries and influenced an entire generation, TLC falls directly into that category and we are honored to tell their incredible story as it has never been told before.”
“As someone who has long been in awe of TLC and their musical and cultural impact, I am thrilled to be a part of bringing the story of their music, their journey, and their continuing reverence to the screen,” Williams said in a press release. “I am grateful for the opportunity to work with A&E, as well as filmmaker Matthew Kay, to bring this film to life. We hope this film illuminates a side of this incredible group and Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, and Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas that long-time fans and viewers alike have not seen before.”
Leon@TLCArmy
TLC-Army.com 