An interview with Rozonda Thomas - Chilli from TLC (Bang Magazine, 2003)

"Turn on the TV, Lisa burned the house down," was how Chilli informed T-Boz that their band mate had transformed a flaming shoe in a bath into $1.3 million worth of ash, in late-1994. 

Left-Eye’s relationship with Atlanta Falcons footballer Andre Rison had never been particularly harmonious. On the night of the fire, Andre returned home at 6AM to find a drunk Lopes hurling abuse. Failing in his attempts to subdue her he went for a walk, leaving her to set fire to his trainers with devastating results. Lisa pleaded guilty to arson, receiving five years probation on the understanding she enter into a 28 day alcohol treatment program. 

"I couldn’t believe it. All I could think was ‘Is she okay?’" recalls Chilli. "I didn’t think about how it would affect the group.  I guess the reality check of what she had done was that a lot of people really didn’t wanna touch TLC. We couldn’t get covers of certain magazines because at that time, especially being black, it’s not cool to have that much controversy. It’s not really acceptable in our community. She was on probation for a long time. We couldn’t go out of town. It was crazy."

For a band who would, for a time, become the biggest girl group in US history and spend as much time on CNN as they would in the charts, TLC’s beginnings are unremarkable. Calling themselves Second Nature, Atlanta based Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Lisa ‘Left-Eye’ Lopes and Crystal Jones - the Pete Best of the group - were introduced to manager Pebbles Reid by a colleague at Watkins’ beauty salon in 1990. Pebbles was already well known for her US hit ’Girlfriend’  and it was she who suggested the acronym TLC. 
 

Crystal, sacked by Lisa with the words: “Girl, we got some good news and some bad news. The good news is Pebbles wants to sign us. The bad news is we don’t want you in our group no more”, was replaced by Rozonda Thomas, quickly re-christened Chilli to avoid a further band name change. 

 "Lisa and I hit it off right away," says Chilli. "Tionne was very stand-offish so I didn’t click with her in the beginning. Our whole inspiration was [R‘n’B trailblazers] Bell Biv DeVoe. We wanted to be the girl BBD. I think we sold just as much as they did at the time, with the first record."

TLC signed a recording contract with Laface, the label owned by Babyface and Pebble’s husband L.A. Reid. Their early image was a mess of oversized, neon dungaree-clad chaos. Lisa wore a condom over one eye of her glasses. The safe sex message quite literally in your face. Worn on the left eye like the American football inspired black stripe that would become her trademark. Asked to explain the bias she would only say "Because eye is right." Looking closely, it was a weird eye. Maybe it was looking out for her. Someone needed to.

Their 1992 debut Ooooooohhh . . . On The TLC Tip was produced by then-newcomer Dallas Austin. Nicknamed ‘New Jill Swing’ (an answer to the male dominated New Jack Swing of BDD and Bobby Brown) Ooooooohhh . . .  has a sense of humour and a street swagger that its male-made contemporaries lacked. Using the limited vocal ranges of Watkins and Thomas to create a low, sexy, almost spoken delivery, peppered with the rapid fire raps of Lopes, the TLC-sound would far outlive the swing genre.  Debut single ‘Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg’ reached Number Five in the US, bettered by follow up ‘Baby-Baby-Baby‘ reaching Number Two. 

"I remember being on tour with Boys II Men and they became our competition," says Chilli. "Although we were friends, when it comes to the charts, everyone’s competing. I remember Nate saying, ‘We’re at ten today,’ and I was like ‘Yeah? We’re at nine and a half’."

Without 1994's CrazySexyCool  there would be no Neptunes and no Destiny’s Child. Mariah and Whitney would still be warbling ballads and Justin Timberlake would sound like Westlife. CrazySexyCool won two Grammys and sold 10 million copies worldwide, and US Number Ones 'Creep' and 'Waterfalls' remain the blueprint for much of today's pop. Almost ten years on, the album still sounds like the future of music.

An indication of the year zero that Crazy . . . was to be, can be seen in the guest appearances. Busta Rhymes while he was still just the weird one with A Tribe Called Quest. Dre of Outkast six years before his group achieve international acclaim. P-Diddy can be seen clinging to this record by his fingernails. TLC were attracting the future. They accelerated the advance. They put their foot down.

"I definitely see it that we opened the door for Destiny's Child," agrees Chilli. "Not only them but even the Spice Girls. They weren’t like us but we still opened the door. What people don’t know is that when TLC came out, you had solo female artists but not girl groups like us. We always competed with boys.

"We had the balls to do anything. It’s unfortunate that you don’t really see that in today’s world. I wish that we were still in the 90s, to tell you the truth. Because right now, music is just so different. Back in the day, a rapper needed a singer to get on the radio. Now you need a rapper. That is not how it’s supposed to be!”

CrazySexyCool went quadruple platinum in the US and made the trio, at the time, the most successful girl group in history. Then some shit hit a fan. Unhappy with Pebbles as a manager and the meagre percentage deal the girls were still signed to, the group attempted to extricate themselves from her control. Pebbles, who had now separated from her husband, sued LaFace claiming each member of TLC owed her company $566,434 and accusing  the label of attempting to entice TLC away from her. In 1995, at the height of their career, the group filed for bankruptcy  with liabilities of $3.5 million. 

In 1999 the comeback single ‘No Scrubs’ started a revolution in sound for R’n’B that can be heard in the work of everyone from J-Lo to Liberty X. The album, however, was delayed by contractual and inter-band wrangling. It was rumoured that producer Austin had demanded $1 million per track, complicated by the fact that he was the father of Chilli’s son Tron (yes, he is named after the movie.) Lopes launched a new group, the very TLC-like Blaque. Watkins, meanwhile, married rapper Mack 10 and also had a child.

"We had a lot of internal problems" admits Chilli. "It’s funny because we’ve always been able to be successful when it comes to our records, because our fans are so devoted. But we’ve never really been able to be happy with it because we were kinda having problems inside. I remember doing Fanmail and I think that was the beginning of what was to come, the beginning of Lisa wanting to venture off and do other things. So it wasn’t that fun for me."

Against the odds, 3rd album Fanmail made it out and to the top of the US charts. Single ‘Unpretty’, based on a T-Boz poem, featured a purging teen and an anti-boob job message in the accompanying video.

"Oh my God, just the other day I was in the grocery store and this girl told me that her friend wanted to commit suicide and the only thing that really helped her not to do that was that song. When you hear stuff like that and, like, when this girl told me that she was gonna have breast implants done and she saw that part in the video and didn’t. It’s just amazing. You really have to think about how powerful you are in this position. I take that job serious."

Since childhood, Tionne had suffered with Sickle Cell Anemia - an inherited blood disorder with a long list of painful, potentially fatal, complications. Rest and a lack of stress are essential in keeping the symptoms at bay. In her book Thoughts, Watkins describes it thus: “It’s as if someone is stabbing me with a butcher knife over and over.” Touring became impossible.

"Her health, of course, was always more important but . . . I’m a performer and more than doing the videos and television shows, it’s about ‘the tour’ to me," says Chilli. "It was about getting on that stage and performing for your fans and giving them all you got. I wish that we would’ve been able to tour. God, if we were able to tour I think that we would be a lot bigger than we are."

Tionne had released a solo single, a celebration of bean flicking called ‘Touch Myself’.  But the increasingly fractious Lopes - who carved the word 'hate' into her arm around this time - took out an advertisement in Entertainment Weekly suggesting they all make albums individually as a popularity contest: "I challenge Tionne 'Player' Watkins and Rozonda 'Hater' Thomas to an album entitled The Challenge... a 3-CD set that contains three solo albums. Each will be due to the record label by October 1st 2000... I also challenge Dallas 'The Manipulator' Austin to produce all of the material at a fraction of his normal rate... I'm sure LaFace would not mind throwing in a $1.5 million prize for the winner."

"I though that was very stupid," snaps Chilli. "Why would you compete with your own group members? That didn’t make any sense to me. You’re on the same team so you help each other. If she had been smart about it, Tionne and I could’ve done some stuff for her on her record which would only make it better and show unity."

In the end, Lisa alone took up her own challenge. First single ‘Block Party’ was an extraordinary nursery-rhyme rap, recalling Tom Tom Club. However, her solo album Supernova received such a critical mauling that it remains unreleased in the US.

Unable to tour as TLC, and frustrated by the lack of support for Supernova, Lopes chose to sign with repugnant criminal Suge Knight’s Tha Row label in January 2002, under the name N.I.N.A. ('New Identity Non-Applicable'). She posted a cryptic message on her website: “I was visited by a man in my dream, one that sweated me all night about Mr. Suge Knight. He was right, but that's a whole other story.”

Three months later, on April 25th 2002, whilst taking a break in Honduras, Lisa, driving a rented SUV, careened off a two-lane highway after passing a pick-up truck. She died instantly from chest and head wounds. Police chief Marco Tulio Palma Rivera reported: “There was no indication of drugs or alcohol.” Chilli and T-Boz released a statement saying "Today we truly lost a sister". 5000 people attended the funeral in Lithonia, Georgia.

"When I think about Lisa, it’s more in the beginning," says Chilli sadly. "I love Lisa but that’s the Lisa that I was crazy about. She was just so silly and I thought the world of her during that time. She was so focused. Everything was the three of us: ‘What are we gonna do next?’ I always wanted us to be the biggest girl group ever. We had the same goal. That was my fondest memory of her. Because when Lisa is focused on something you can forget about whatever else is around!"

 TLC’s 4th album had already begun production. Far from being a sombre tribute, 3D - released in September of 2002, with artwork coordinated by Lisa - was harder and funkier than any of its predecessors. The Missy Elliot & Timbaland track ‘Dirty Dirty’ barely lets up its rambunctious pace to holler "Left-Eye gets a moment of silence." T-Boz told hiponline.com: "Lisa is a party girl, so this is a party album." With only four songs featuring contributions from Lopes, the girls used samples from her solo work wherever appropriate. 

With a 'Greatest Hits' album forthcoming (Rozonda and Tionne are working on new tracks with producer Lil’ John). This looks like the end of the story for TLC.

"To me that’s what 'Greatest Hits' means," insists Chilli. "I never understood why people give you 'Greatest Hits' then they come out with a new album. To me the 'Greatest Hits' is all the hits, and you’re done with whatever chapter that is in your life. So it is the end. There’s no Lisa; I don’t see how we can make new TLC songs or do a whole ‘nother album. I think it’s time. We had our time."