Interview

Interview

TLC: ‘We’re smart enough to understand what people love about us’

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By Shaun Curran for iPaper

I’ve just asked the members of TLC whether, like the lyrics to their 90s megahit “No Scrubs”, they can spot a sleazy, good-for-nothing scrub coming from 10 yards.

“Sometimes!” shrieks Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins. “Sometimes!” “Most times!” says Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. “I think you really can tell.”

“Absolutely!” “We have a scrub-dar! It works most of the time. We know!”

We are crammed in a Portakabin backstage at south London’s Mighty Hoopla festival, a pop extravaganza that TLC will headline tonight.

They’ve just come from Paris (“We had fun, oui oui, oui oui”) and despite getting on site just minutes ago – when I first arrive, Watkins is putting eyelashes on, Thomas is doing her hair – I feel like I’m in the presence of a well-honed double act: a brash one (Watkins) and a quieter one (Thomas), they finish each other sentences, nod in enthusiastic agreement (mostly) and show the chemistry that 25 years as America’s biggest girl band dictates.

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Initially a trio with Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, just how big TLC became in the 90s is difficult to quantify. There are the bare statistics – £65m record sales worldwide, second in girl group terms only to the Spice Girls, alongside 56 different awards, including four Grammys and one Brit – but their influence sprawls to the present day.

TLC’s message of female empowerment couldn’t be more relevant in 2018, while their blend of sultry R’n’B and hip-hop still impacts the charts: Ed Sheeran had to pay royalties to the writers of “No Scrubs” for the similarities between the track and his song “Shape of You”.

Their first-ever UK show at London’s Koko last year sold out in two minutes; a Kickstarter campaign to fund last year’s self-titled comeback album doubled its target in two days, with Katy Perry among the financial contributors. And, seriously, who doesn’t like TLC?

Afterwards when I mention the interview to my Uber driver, he starts singing their biggest hit “Waterfalls” and even mentions Thomas by name. It was juggernaut-level success that the band was initially too busy to recognise.

“It was only when we started seeing people faint or cry and saying they didn’t commit suicide because of something we wrote or sang or said,” says Watkins. “That’s kind of deep.”

Yet success was blighted every step of the way: they had to fight record company LaFace to get “Waterfalls”, which catapulted their 1994 album CrazySexyCool to 14 million sales, to even get heard. “[LaFace founder] Clive Davis didn’t believe in it,” Watkins says.

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“It’s funny how after you do something the person who didn’t believe in you is like: ‘I knew it was going to be great’.” Personal problems constantly threatened to derail them. TLC were declared bankrupt in 1995; at one point, relations between the three were so bad that Lopes, feeling underused and underappreciated, challenged Watkins and Thomas to make solo albums, with a $1m prize for the winner.

When Lopes died in a car crash in 2002, seven months before underwhelming fourth album 3D, TLC’s reign at the top was over. “That was the hardest time,” recalls Watkins. “We were still in a zombie state because we were still in mourning.

The record company were like: ‘You have to put the album out,’ so that was the first realisation she wasn’t there. “That was a hard time. It was real awkward. Because we weren’t ready. And that whole album just looks sad to me now I look back.” Thomas nods in agreement.

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It makes TLC’s comeback nearly 20 years after their heyday somewhat unlikely. Watkins seems affronted when I suggest that, until a packaged 90s nostalgia tour with New Kids on the Block in 2015, they’d apparently disappeared – “It seems that’s out there a lot, because we hear that a lot, but I don’t know why, because we never stopped” – but aside from bits of American TV and the odd gig abroad, they’d slipped from public view.

There is some toing and froing between the pair as to why the timing was right to record again. “I was probably the hold-up,” Watkins says. “She stayed ready.” “You know what,” Thomas says, “even when Lisa was alive, all three us were totally dedicated to the group regardless of what you heard. But each person has their own thing in the group.

“I feel like,” she adds, lowering her voice and stretching out an arm towards Watkins, “and I know you’re going to agree, that I’m the heart of the group. I am always ready. I am Team TLC all day long. Not that they’re not…” Watkins shoots her an OTT unimpressed look. “But it’s on another level. You know it is! Come on, sister! You know I’m right.”

Recording went smoothly, even without Lopes, who wasn’t missed in the studio because, Thomas says, after 1992 debut Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip, they never recorded together anyway. “After the first album, it was: ‘OK, call me when it’s time for me to do my part’.”

“But you know the hard part?” Watkins interjects. “Coming up with songs that people will like. That’s nerve-racking. When you have songs like “No Scrubs”, “Unpretty” and “Waterfalls”, those are not easy to come by. Then they’re sitting there saying: ‘Well, you better come up with something good like that’. Like, what is this? That’s a lot of pressure.”

The album’s best track “Way Back”, a classy west side groove featuring Snoop Dogg, boasts that the pair “picked up where we left off”. Impervious to current pop trends, like the album itself, it sounds like no time whatsoever has passed in TLC’s world.

“What’s smart about us,” says Thomas, “is we’re smart enough to understand what people love about us. And they love the authenticity: the things we talk about, how we dress, how we perform. We just stick to that formula. The outcome is always going to be a TLC song because of the sound, her voice and my voice.”

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I ask if they’ve considered what Lopes might have made of the album. It’s the only time the pair hesitates to speak. “I think that when she was alive…” Thomas says. “It’s that TLC thing. She understood that was us. I think she would have loved the songs.”

Though they will continue to perform – they fancy a Vegas-style residency somewhere – the pair is adamant that it will be their final album. How can they be so sure? “Never say never” says Watkins.

“We might do soundtracks or Christmas songs. We ain’t going anywhere. But a studio album? It’s just not the same. The industry is so different. And some of it is kind of a joke now,” she says, gearing up for a rant.

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“Like the superstars and stuff? They are few and far between, the real big legends. Because I think today people use that word ‘legend’ real, real, real, loose. How the hell you been here two years and you’re a legend? I don’t care how popular you are. Reality stars are popular. Who cares? If Instagram went away tomorrow, a lot of people wouldn’t be working. What you going to fall back on, huh?”

The subtext of which seems to be: TLC, against all odds, are still here a quarter of a century on. “And we’re just as strong as before,” Watkins says. “We’ve been through all kinds of life stuff, had kids, marriage, divorce, death. You go through all of that, you can’t help but be stronger.”

The album ‘TLC’ is out now on 852 Musiq

Interview

Salt N Pepa: TLC Were Upset We Didn’t Talk To Them at Grammys

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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.

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TLC in the Pebbles music video ‘Backyard’ featuring Salt N Pepa
So 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

PaperMag

Interview

TLC: How We Made “Waterfalls”

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Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas, singer

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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TLC headline the Mighty Hoopla festival in Brockwell Park, London, on 3 June.
Interview serves as part of The Guardian’s weekly ‘How We Made‘ series. 
Interview

TLC on Cardi B and Why They Don’t Celebrate Left Eye’s Passing

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”