FEATURE:
Let’s Do It Again
TLC’s CraZySeXyCOol at Thirty
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DEPENDING how you stylise the title…
one cannot deny that TLC’s second studio album is a masterpiece. Following on from 1992’s Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip, it was a massive leap forward in terms of confidence and quality. Their debut is fantastic, though CraZySeXyCOol has so many gems. On 15th November, 1994, the trio - of Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, and Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas – put out into the world one of the best albums of the 1990s. The group began working on a follow-up to their debut in 1993, but there was not much productivity and development due to personal issues. Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes was battling alcohol issues. She was in a volatile relationship. Even though her role was diminished on the album, she still contributes a lot and is responsible for some of the best moments. Boasting some of the trio’s best cuts – Creep, Red Light Special and the epic Waterfalls -, they would follow up CraZySeXyCOol with 1999’s FanMail. Reaching number three in the U.S. and four in the U.K., I think CraZySeXyCOol still sound amazing and nuanced thirty years later. We live in a time when there is not really an equivalent to TLC. Operating now as a duo – Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes died in 2002 -, you can tell how they have inspired a legion of new Pop and R&B artists. We can hear elements of CraZySeXyCOol in contemporary albums. I want to mark the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of a truly great album. One that I would urge everyone to listen to. One where the deep cuts are really strong and compelling. I especially love Kick Your Game and Let’s Do It Again. The interludes are also really good. There is this flow to CraZySeXyCOol that makes it seem like a single piece of work almost.
Before I finish this feature, I am going to bring in a few features about CraZySeXyCOol. Marking its twentieth anniversary in 2014, Billboard did a track-by-track examination of the album. I hope that we get some new features and insight into CraZySeXyCOol as we head towards its big 3-0:
“The success of CrazySexyCool was due to the disc’s singles. All four landed in the top five of the Hot 100, and two reached No. 1. One of those chart-toppers, “Waterfalls,” stands as one of the decade’s greatest songs, and in so far as it used hip-hop, soul, and a big-budget CGI video to sell social messages concerning inner-city drug abuse and the spread of HIV/AIDS, it’s ‘94 to the core. It’s also timeless.
“Waterfalls” is one of the few CrazySexyCool tracks that truly is TLC — as in all three ladies blending their distinct voices as they had on their 1992 debut, Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip. A lot had happened in the nearly three years since these sexy tomboys in the baggy jeans bedazzled with condoms arrived on the scene. Most notably, Left Eye had been convicted of arson after nearly burning down then-boyfriend Andre Rison’s mansion, and her court-mandated rehab overlapped with the CrazySexyCool sessions.
Lopes’ raps are notably absent on many of these tracks, and without their toughest, funniest member, T-Boz and Chilli had to reinvent themselves. Working mostly with the same stable of producers they’d used on TLC Tip — Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, most notably — T-Boz and Chilli got down on some sultry bedroom jams, scoring big with “Creep,” “Diggin’ on You,” and “Red Light Special.”
It’s mostly via the intro and interlude tracks (there are five of ‘em, this being a ‘90s album and all) that TLC puts forth the album’s loose concept: To some extent, all women are crazy, sexy, and cool. It’s just a question of how those elements balance out at any given moment. With CrazySexyCool, TLC got the ratio just right, and even though the follow-up, 1999’s FanMail, became the group’s first and only No. 1 album, this is the one people come back to”.
Back in 2019, NME celebrated twenty-five years of CraZySeXyCOol by speaking with TLC. ‘T-Boz’ and ‘Chilli’ spoke about how the trio really felt they needed to prove themselves on their second studio album. It was clear they more than stepped up to the plate and delivered one of the seminal albums of the 1990s. It remains this beloved masterpiece:
“We were all sitting there like, ‘This is terrible’,” says Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, laughing as she recalls the time bandmate Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes turned in her verse for their first Number One single, ‘Creep’. “She basically wrote an anti-‘Creep’ rap. So when it came to shooting the first video we took the rap off of it. And because we did that Lisa put tape on her mouth as a protest so she couldn’t sing the song.”
“And not regular tape,” adds Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. “We’re talking about the grey tape you put on a box at the UPS store, the stuff that can take your skin off. Then we had to go to the trailer and try and talk her into taking it off.”
According to T-Boz, Left Eye, who tragically died in a car crash in 2002, wasn’t a fan of the subject matter of ‘Creep’. In among the track’s jazzy horns, funky drum kicks and longing synths were lyrics such as: “I’ll never leave him down/ Though I might mess around/ It’s only cause I need some affection,” which she feared her then-boyfriend, NFL wide receiver Andre Rison, might get the wrong idea.
“They had one of those real touchy, jealous-type relationships so she didn’t want him to think that she was cheating,” she explains. “But it had nothing to do with their real relationship, it was actually a personal situation that happened to me.”
Remembering Left Eye and the “cute and weird” ways she would pen her raps, T-Boz says: “She used to go in the bathroom and write in the stall with her little bit of weed. She used to sit there and smoke, and write sideways on the toilet with her feet up on the wall and her back against the stall.” And those raps were an important part of the success of ‘CrazySexyCool’.
Certified 12-times platinum in the United States and selling over 23 million copies worldwide, the album saw TLC go on to become the first girl group to ever be awarded diamond status by the RIAA. Bagging them a couple of Grammys, they were also first black act ever to win the coveted Video of the Year award at the MTV Video Music Awards for their breakout hit, ‘Waterfalls’.
But more than sales and accolades, ‘CrazySexyCool’ paved the way for the next generation of girl groups. Taking what they had learned from watching those that came before them — such as the likes of SWV, En Vogue and R&B boybands like New Edition and BBD — TLC packaged a fresh new attitude and unique swagger that inspired the next wave of girl power. Some of the fans who grew up listening to the group went on to take centre stage themselves: All Saints, Little Mix and, on a much larger scale, Destiny’s Child and the Spice Girls – something Mel C acknowledged in an interview with The Guardian last year.
“We had a lot to prove with that second album,” says Chilli. “It established us as a group that was gonna be here for a long time and it proved we weren’t just a fad.”
“And I think it’s doing what we wanted it to do still to this day” T-Boz adds. “It’s just good music that has no age and appeals to everyone, regardless of colour. It doesn’t matter what gender, creed or nationality you are, it’s just great music and that’s what I love about it. It’s timeless.”
Timeless is a certainly a good way to describe ‘CrazySexyCool’, as is, unsurprisingly, the album’s title. Devised by Left Eye, Chilli says the title — which represents the individual personalities of the group (Crazy [Left Eye], Sexy [Chilli], Cool [T-Boz]) — was conceived while on a trip to Europe.
“It’s so funny because when Lisa came up with it I was personally a little upset,” explains Chilli. “I thought Tionne should have been sexy. We all could have played crazy and sexy but I know I’m cool – I’m the cool one. I was confused as to why I would be sexy. I was like, ‘That’s not me, that’s Tionne!’ I just didn’t look at myself like that.”
Laughing, T-Boz says: “Lisa slapped her upside her head and was like, ‘Girl, you better recognise!’”
It was obvious from the moment you first pushed play on ’CrazySexyCool’ just how much of a departure it was from the group’s 1992 debut, ‘Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip’. Pairing ardent grooves and sensual riffs with edgy hip-hop beats and moving away from the popular sounds of new jack swing, they took what Mary J. Blige was doing at the time with her signature brand of hip-hop soul, mixed in some Atlanta swag, and delivered something new and distinctive for listeners to wrap their ears around.
Taking on more serious subject matters than in previous years, the album was a coming-of-age moment for TLC. From AIDS and gang violence to sexuality and romanticism, regardless of the topic there was a newfound confidence and youthful optimism on display across the album’s 16 tracks. In the erotic bounce of ‘Let’s Do It Again’ and ‘Take Our Time’, the trio displayed a more assertive side to their art while proving they were completely comfortable with the more explicit side of self-expression”.
There are features like this that I would advise people to check out. I am going to end with a couple of reviews. Louder Than War provided their take on CraZySeXyCOol in 2014. There is a new generation who are discovering this album and the queens that are TLC. I do hope that CraZySeXyCOol gets a lot of new airplay on its thirtieth anniversary on 15th November. I have loved this album ever since it came out. It was a big part of my teenage years:
“The 23-million selling collection took the band to the top of the charts all over the planet with polished R&B tunes that were perfectly crafted by the leading producers of the day. CrazySexyCool meant TLC members Tionne ’T-Boz’ Watkins, Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes’ were catapulted into the realm of pop royalty, while simultaneously scrabbling for payment and control over their musical legacy.
CrazySexyCool is the second album from Atlanta-based vocal group TLC and it continued the sex positive message on which the band had built their early persona. The themes of this sophomore effort included women dictating when and how they engaged in sex, women directing how they want to be loved and women showing players what it feels like to be played in return.
This second album was produced by some of the biggest names in the music world including Dallas Austin, Babyface, Sean Combs and Jermaine Dupri. The sound of TLC was heavily shaped by these men who ironed out the Left Eye-driven fun-loving cacophony of early tracks such as Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg and Hat 2 Da Back, instead steering the women towards more mainstream-friendly songs such as Red Light Special, Creep, Let’s Do It Again and Take Our Time.
As a fan, I felt rapper Left Eye was pushed out by several forces. Perhaps the men behind the scenes had their eyes on the payout. TLC was a cash cow set for massive things following on from the runaway success of their debut 1992 album Oooooooh… On The TLC Tip. That rap-heavy disc featured Lopes as co-writer or writer on ten tracks and the direction of the group seemed focussed around her.
Left Eye was also battling legal woes following on from an arson charge and a rehab stint supposedly connected to alcohol dependency. TLC was coming apart at the seams as CrazySexyCool was becoming one of the biggest selling albums by a female group in history. T-Boz was constantly struggling with effects of her sickle-cell anaemia, while Chilli was by her own admission still dealing with her decision to terminate a pregnancy with group writer/producer Dallas Austin.
The band was also struggling financially amid claims they were forced to file for bankruptcy due to contractual turbulence with original manager Pebbles. Having sold tens of millions of records, the women were left with very little money. This is one of the saddest but most often-recounted stories in the pop world. Young people sign constrictive contracts that allow no breathing room when runaway sales come knocking. TLC even had to buy the rights to their name and image from their first manager in order to keep the show on the road.
As you can see, it is easy to become swept up in the drama of TLC but it was the music on CrazySexyCool that the public were lapping up.
Waterfalls was the best of everything TLC had to offer at the time. The rambunctious new jack swing of earlier material had been replaced by funky R&B with the smoothest of production values furnished by Organize Noize of Atlanta. Members of this production crew co-wrote the song with Left Eye who delivers one of the most defining raps of her career. T-Boz uses the verses to warn young people of the dangers related to gang activity and unprotected sex while the music and harmonies are irresistible.
The song became one of the highest selling releases of 1995 and showed where a mature TLC could go sonically while retaining the crucial ingredient of Left Eye. Waterfalls is still a staple of mainstream radio in 2014, although sadly it’s the radio edit devoid of the rap that often makes it to air. The song is so well known and loved it has even been recorded by Bette Midler this year for her cover album of female artists. Extra info while we are at it: a little known fact about the tune that became the most well-known of the TLC catalogue is that CeeLo Green sang backing vocals.
CrazySexyCool contains fantastic pop and R&B songs that make for an album with no dud tracks. Diggin’ On You wasn’t an all-conquering radio smash in the vein of Waterfalls, but it certainly is one of the freshest sounding pop songs to emerge from the era while penultimate track Switch is simply a whole lot of fun. After almost being treated as an afterthought throughout the long player, Left Eye returns to close out the album with a darker, self-penned rap on Sumthin’ Wicked This Way Comes. It highlights what an essential component her voice and life views were to the overall TLC package.
The album is a shining example of mid-90s R&B, peppered with just enough pop and rap to ensure maximum appeal. R&B, rap, pop and even middle of the road radio stations kept the singles from CrazySexyCool in near-constant rotation. The production gurus made the long player one of the slickest music collections around and it is often still found on must-listen lists compiled by popular culture buffs.
CrazySexyCool’s follow up, FanMail, opened the door wider for Left Eye to return to the fold which resulted in a futuristic, grittier and more accomplished sound. Her tragic death a few years later put an end to her talent so we must look back on her contributions (such as the 20-year old CrazySexyCool) to remind ourselves how she helped TLC become one of the most celebrated musical acts on the planet”.
I want to include most of Pitchfork’s exploration of CraZySeXyCOol because it makes so many important observations. Their words about a landmark Pop/R&B album are brilliant. Its “unapologetic femininity and low-key swagger” definitely impacted a lot of acclaimed contemporaries. I often think that groups like Destiny’s Child and Spice Girls were inspired by TLC’s second studio album:
“The original concept for CrazySexyCool was simple: Women contain multitudes. The title, an amalgamation of their personalities, was a way to subvert the public’s perception of each member: Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins as the “cool” one, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas as the “sexy” seducer, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes herself supposedly “crazy.” She figured, rightfully, that each of them was all of those things at once. Straightforward enough—and yet some of the album’s male producers initially missed the point about the self as a many-layered construct. “They’d do a crazy song for me, a sexy song for Chilli, and a cool song for Tionne,” Left Eye told Vibe in 1994. “We had to explain that CrazySexyCool doesn’t just describe us individually. It describes all the parts of every woman.”
Each member of the Atlanta R&B trio had a distinct role, but the point was how they all came together. T-Boz was raspy and matter-of-fact, her jazz-like vocal style centering tone and swagger over power and clarity. Chilli was the closest to traditional R&B, imbuing their songs with quiet-storm sultriness. Left Eye was the rebellious poet who rapped, sang, and came up with many of their musical and visual concepts.
It was Left Eye who suggested the group pin condoms to their clothing and tape them over her own eyeglasses to promote safe sex, a laudable fashion statement that came to define their anything-goes credo as artists. As with their predecessors Salt-N-Pepa, none of TLC’s messaging in their songs, visuals, or outfits seemed scripted or telegraphed. Unlike in the typical girl group, no one member was ever elevated over another. Their individual styles merged seamlessly because they played off each other’s strengths, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Their 1992 debut album, Ooooooohhh... on the TLC Tip, presented the trio as sexual and independent twentysomething women who allowed themselves to be goofy, improper, and a little bit messy on their own terms. The critical success and triple-platinum sales of that album positioned TLC as role models for younger listeners and pop industry anarchists who pushed the fundamental truth that women have basic physical needs. In the video for “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg,” they fired water guns and sang about sexual autonomy while sporting bright, baggy jumpsuits and kooky Digital Underground-style puffy hats, making the case for sexual expression without suppression.
CrazySexyCool was slicker and more scandalous, smoothing out TLC’s approach without losing the tongue-in-cheek wit of the debut. Its songs emphasize not just sex but pleasure in all its many forms. It’s a liberating, multifaceted view that suggests sexy doesn’t have to be raunchy or explicit alone: It can manifest itself in the movement of a serpentine sax, or the way T-Boz whispers, simply, “Yes, it’s me again” at the beginning of “Creep” like it’s foreplay.
Released in November 1994, CrazySexyCool earned TLC two No. 1 hits, “Creep” and “Waterfalls,” and secured their current status as the highest-selling girl group of all time, having gone diamond with 10 million units sold in the U.S. by June 1996. TLC’s singular appeal wasn’t only from catchy hooks and savvy visuals: It was their organic way of touching on universal subjects like sex, self-love, and freedom with a certain ease and affability that made their music both exemplary and inviting.
While their more vocal-centric peers of the ’90s—SWV, En Vogue, Xscape—prioritized neatly stacked gospel harmonies and flat-out singing, TLC’s collective advantage was making real music in a pop space that more often presented girl groups as flawless, demure, coordinated confections. With its funky energy and mixture of singing and rapping, CrazySexyCool fit squarely between the year’s star-making R&B debuts by Brandy, Usher, and Aaliyah and the major first statements in hip-hop from the likes of Notorious B.I.G., Nas, and OutKast. Their signing to Babyface and Antonio L.A. Reid’s LaFace records had catapulted them to the forefront of Atlanta’s hip-hop and R&B scenes, and their crossover success carved space for labelmates like OutKast and Goodie Mob to be as weird and expansive as they wanted, and still make it pop.
Left Eye’s deftness as a rapper, and T-Boz’s talk-sing style, which flirted with rap cadences, provided all sorts of possibilities for producers like Jermaine Dupri and Sean “Puffy” Combs, two prominent officiants in the marriage between hip-hop and R&B. Rap bookends the album: Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest sets the tone on CrazySexyCool’s intro, kicking a cool 16 like a hype man warming up the crowd at a house party; and well before many listeners outside of Atlanta knew his name, TLC’s hometown peer André 3000 appears on the gloomy closing track “Sumthin’ Wicked This Way Comes.”
The lead single “Creep” was the first sign that TLC had discovered a more muted palette compared to the hyperactive sound of their debut. The song slinks in with a sample of Slick Rick’s “Hey Young World” as T-Boz presents the best and simplest solution to being cheated on: “So I creep/Yeah.” Her low, conversational register makes it sound like she’s got her feet kicked up in the recording booth and a cool mint in her mouth. She adds a slight vocal fry on the Babyface-produced “Diggin’ on You,” a subtly jazzy and easygoing love story about surrendering to the rizz. Left Eye blocks it instead on upbeat “Kick Your Game,” taking comedic turns as both the pursued and the pursuer over Jermaine Dupri’s signature bells-and-bounce production. Knowing that Left Eye once said she met her ex-boyfriend, NFL star Andre Rison, after he followed her in the club one night trying to holler, it’s hard not to hear the shade when she mentions a pickup line about making love on the 50-yard line.
T-Boz’s morning voice is supremely suited for the album’s overtly sexy songs, especially “Red Light Special,” a drawn-out tease over a spiraling string instrumental from Babyface, with sax notes snaking like they’re doing slow body rolls. She has a laid-back style of seduction, while Chilli sounds like she’s at the edge of ecstasy, a dynamic they also play with on “Let’s Do It Again.” What’s sexy is cool is silly and vice versa, even in passing moments, like the interlude where Chilli initiates a game of phone sex, only to end the call with a juvenile joke and a toilet flush. The only point seems to be that it thrills her, and that’s enough.
TLC’s go-to producer Dallas Austin said he wanted to “bring out the Prince side” of the group on the album, an influence felt in the slithering melodies and pure craving for sex. “Red Light Special” sounds like a straight-shooting sister to Prince’s tickling, moaning “International Lover,” with a similar crawling chord progression. Babyface produced the actual Prince cover: a rework of “If I Was Your Girlfriend” that T-Boz manipulates with a sly wink and a higher-than-usual vocal range. (Prince, who once called TLC his favorite group, granted his rare approval for the cover.) Prince’s original pines for the singer’s imagined intimacy between platonic female friends; TLC uses the more traditional meaning of girlfriend, twisting the original without losing its subversive spirits. “Case of the Fake People” is a similar whirlpool of funk, interpolating the O’Jays’ sweeping “Backstabbers” with boom-bap production from Austin and T-Boz and Chili’s voices swirling in and out of overlapping melodies.
T-Boz loved pointing out that Clive Davis, founder and then-president of LaFace’s parent label, Arista Records, initially hated the concept of “Waterfalls.” In fairness, it was an odd choice for a single: a cautionary tale about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and drug abuse that’s weighty in subject matter but weightless in execution, using lakes and waterfalls as a metaphor for slipping over the edge. The airy, warped production from OutKast producers Organized Noize sounds like actual carbonated water bubbles bursting on the track. It’s a wonder that the song worked, let alone topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for seven weeks straight. But “Waterfalls” is a beauty, one that gets deep without drowning itself.
By the time T-Boz and Chilli started recording CrazySexyCool in the summer of 1994, Left Eye was spending time in court-ordered rehab after being indicted on a felony arson charge for setting fire to the home she shared with Rison, meaning she wasn’t as present for the sessions as on other TLC albums. She wrote and recorded her verse for “Waterfalls” during a two-hour break from the rehab center. Admiring the world around her in the car, she felt optimistic: “My life is 10 shades of gray/I pray all 10 fade away.” Left Eye, among hip-hop’s most agile lyricists, once said she never really distinguished between a rap and a poem. She rhymes from an almost childlike perspective here: innocent, curious, cocky, and mischievous. “Waterfalls” is as much Left Eye’s poetic opus as it is TLC’s career-defining record. In her limited appearances, she provides the album with many such small but potent pleasures, whether trading preacher-esque yelps with Busta Rhymes on “Can I Get a Witness (Interlude)” or rapping abstractly about whatever she wants to and somehow tying it back to the topic at hand on “Switch.”
Through TLC’s willingness to be anything—but themselves most of all—CrazySexyCool demonstrates that authenticity can be the driving force of a great pop record. That point still resonates nearly 30 years later in the work of artists inspired by TLC, including Kehlani, K-pop powerhouses BLACKPINK, and Cardi B, who referenced Left Eye’s arson charge on her debut album: “Smash your TV from Best Buy/You gon’ turn me into Left Eye”.
On 15th November, it is thirty years since CraZySeXyCOol was released. Rightly heralded upon its release, the album was nominated for six Grammy Awards at the 1996 ceremony. Waterfalls was nominated for the Record of the Year. In addition, two of the album's nominations were for its songwriters: Dallas Austin for Creep; Babyface for Red Light Special. TLC won two awards: Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for Creep. The magnificence and sublime CraZySeXyCOol is a…
LANDMARK release.