FEATURE:
Pretty/Unpretty
TLC’s FanMail at Twenty-Five
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ONE of the best albums…
IN THIS PHOTO: Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas, Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes of TLC at the 1999 Video Music Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
of the late-1990s, TLC’s FanMail was released on 23rd February, 1999. The title, it is said, relates to the fan mail that the trio were sent during their hiatus. Five years after the iconic CrazySexyCool, we got the magnificent FanMail. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week of release. It was at number one for five weeks. I am going to get to features and reviews of the album. It is an album I remember buying and loving. Songs like No Scrubs and Unpretty were pivotal and adored by me and my friends. In the final year of high school, we got this incredible album from Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. FanMail received eight nominations at the GRAMMY Awards, including Album of the Year. It won three. It was the group's final album released in Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' lifetime. She tragically died in 2002; killed in a car crash prior to the release of their fourth studio album, 3D (2002). There are a few features that I need to get to. I will end with a review from NME from 1994. There are many reasons why FanMail is legendary. I will start with a 2019 article from Albumism. They spotlighted and celebrated FanMail on its twentieth anniversary:
“There may have never been an album that marked the beginning of a new musical era as succinctly as TLC’s FanMail. After a four-and-a-half year lay-off, America’s craziest, sexiest, coolest, and most successful R&B group helped craft a new blueprint for how to aurally captivate, visually dazzle, and personally engage millions with a groundbreaking LP.
The dynamic trio of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas who were originally fused and later nurtured under the warmth of the Peach State, fostered an unprecedented string of hits and albums sales with their first two long players, Ooooooohhh...On the TLC Tip (1992) and CrazySexyCool (1994). Released as the fourth and final single from the multi-platinum latter album in late 1995, “Diggin’ On You” extended the hot streak for TLC as their seventh top 10 single.
Maximizing their time during their hiatus to strategically select songs that spoke directly to TLC’s maturity, the ladies turned down several songs that proved to be hits for younger recording artists looking to establish themselves. “Where My Girls At?” was passed on to fellow trio 702 as the lead single for their self-titled sophomore LP, which was released later in 1999. Likewise, “...Baby One More Time” was later used to launch the career of teenage pop sensation Britney Spears for her 1999 debut LP of the same name. Once TLC was finally primed for their third installment, their lead single was as edgy, empowering, and irresistible as any highlight of their acclaimed catalog to date.
Produced by Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, who also co-wrote the song alongside Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, “No Scrubs” propelled TLC toward an even bolder and more unapologetic voice of womanhood. The song’s contentious lyrics led by Chilli shot down some notoriously clichéd pickup lines of the latter half of the 20th Century with hardline rejections like “no, I don't want your number / no, I don't want to give you mine / and no, I don't want to meet you nowhere / no, I don't want none of your time.”
Once T-Boz joined in for the chorus, young women instantly had an anthem to memorize, and guys over 18 who still claimed dibs on the shotgun seat were enflamed by the not-so-subtle jabs at their so-called masculinity. “I don't want no scrubs / a scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me / hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride / trying to holla at me.”
Left Eye, who had always been the major creative force behind the group’s success, contributed to “No Scrubs” by providing a brilliant verse that transitioned smoothly from a spoken word poetry style intro into the hip-hop lyrics “So, let me give you something to think about / inundate your mind with intentions to turn you out / can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me / you as clear as DVD on digital TV screens / satisfy my appetite with something spectacular / check your vernacular, and then I get back to ya.”
The overall performance showed substantial artistic growth for a group that had already scored number one hit singles and achieved multi-platinum status. Aside from stirring up a reasonable amount of new debate material for the never-ending battle of the sexes and redefining the American deadbeat, “No Scrubs” landed as TLC’s third number one single, was nominated for the GRAMMY award in the Record of the Year category, and the Hype Williams directed video won MTV’s Best Group Video award.
Reuniting with long-time collaborator Dallas Austin who wrote and produced “Silly Ho” under his pseudonym Cyptron, the ladies continued with their demonstrative approach to female independence, proclaiming “not goin' let you catch me out / you should take a lesson from me / I ain't the one to be / depending on someone else / I can run a scam / before he can.”
“I’m Good at Being Bad” helped FanMail earn a parental advisory sticker for its unedited version. Produced by the legendary tag-team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the song begins with an innocent instrumental to complement the lyrics delivered by Chilli, “As we walk hand in hand / just kickin' up sand / as the ocean laps at our feet / I'm in your arms / and all of your charms are for me.” The song picks up the pace as T-Boz and Left Eye join the fray, for their own expressions of new millennium feminism.
“Unpretty” slowed the pace down a few notches, embracing a poetic style of songwriting, while meshing Pop and Alternative Rock with the girls’ R&B roots. Across their acclaimed recording career, “Unpretty” sits atop a mountain of hits as the summit of TLC’s ability to connect with fans on a personal level. The heartfelt lyrics touched on themes of insecurity, peer pressure, and female agency. The coinciding video directed by veteran Paul Hunter effectively conveyed the same message visually and even included sign language to avoid communication barriers.
FanMail was timely for the closing of a decade and served as a remarkable proclamation for the voice of young women set to come of age in a new century. TLC used clever avenues to seize the anticipation of the approaching Y2K, with the album’s binary coded album cover and audio appearances by their computer modulated collaborator Vic-E. The ladies stuck to their brand of fun, while artistically expressing each growing pain they had encountered since their previous LP. With FanMail, TLC not only changed the look and sound of R&B at the time, they introduced a newfound depth to the genre, packaging all of it into a generous aural gift to the fans that made them the most successful American female group of the ‘90s”.
Moving things to Rolling Stone and their 2019 feature about FanMail. They highlight a feminist tour de force twenty years after its release. I have such fond memories of FanMail. It is an album that I have endless respect and love for. A legendary trio creating something astonishing and hugely inspiring:
“Nevertheless, instead of capitulating to the demands of the late Nineties pop machine, TLC decided to stick to their R&B roots, turning to both Austin and Babyface to create something more timelessly TLC. And while much of the first world was panicked about the impending doom of Y2K, the crew leaned into the looming techno-disaster, adapting their “New Jill Swing” to a more 808-infused hybrid sound — including a computerized vocaloid and honorary bandmate, who they fondly nicknamed Vic-E. What resulted was FanMail, a cyber-R&B masterpiece that would serve as a blueprint for a new, digitally-savvy generation of genre-defying musicians.
No song better encapsulated their future-facing transformation than the lead single “No Scrubs.” Co-written with Kandi Burruss, former member of girl group Xscape, the song started as a flippant jab at loose men who rove the streets, looking for women to hassle — but would swiftly became a millennial feminist anthem. “A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me,” sing the trio: “Hangin’ out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride/Trying to holla at me.”
“We got a Grammy for writing ‘No Scrubs,'” Burruss told Rolling Stone earlier this month. “It contributed to me getting Songwriter of the Year. I was the first woman to get Songwriter of the Year from ASCAP and ‘No Scrubs’ was part of the reason for me getting it. I couldn’t have asked for a better blessing of a song to have had in my catalog.”
“No Scrubs” was also the first song in which Chilli, who usually ceded the floor to T-Boz and Left Eye’s bad girl swagger, was able to take center stage as a vocalist — and a dissenting voice amid a culture that was all too permissive to sexual harassment. Almost right on schedule, an all-male group called Sporty Thievz led the misogynist backlash against “No Scrubs,” with their own lukewarm track, “No Pigeons.”
“We were cracking up when we heard Sporty Thieves’ [response track] ‘No Pigeons,'” Chilli told Billboard in a recent interview. “There’s so many songs that are negative towards women and you don’t hear a lot of females saying, ‘We’ve got to do an anti version of that one.’ So it’s funny that you have these guys that want to flip “No Scrubs” real quick. They can’t take the heat!”
Their 1994 breakthrough CrazySexyCool delved into the nuances of being liberated women: take their coolly, sexually dominant stance in “Red Light Special,” or their HIV-conscious megahit “Waterfalls,” which cautioned to choose your own adventure wisely — or in other words, by using a barrier method. But in 1999, Fanmail raised the bar to equally stress the need for protecting your heart: the song “Unpretty” was the brainchild of T-Boz, whose boyfriend at the time ghosted her while she was hospitalized with complications from sickle-cell anemia. A gentle, alt-rock reflection on the ways women struggle to embody an unattainable physical ideal — even Grammy-winning vocalists — “Unpretty” was adapted from her book of poems, titled Thoughts, which she penned while in and out of intensive care. “Why do I look to all these things/To keep you happy?” wrote T-Boz, “Maybe get rid of you/And then I’ll get back to me.”
The reception was greater than they ever could have imagined: Letters cascaded in from fans old and new, imparting words of support and stories of their own issues with body image. TLC would invite some of those fans to speak their truths live at the Lady of Soul Awards, where they would be honored with the Aretha Franklin Entertainer of the Year Award. Left Eye, typically accustomed to delivering hard bars, was relegated to perform “Unpretty” that night exclusively in American Sign Language — hinting at her increasing creative divergence from the band. (She barely got the chance to recoup her role in TLC in their following 2002 record, 3D, which she never finished recording; she died in a car wreck that year while on a healing retreat in Honduras.)
Twenty years following the release of their landmark album, TLC still receive fan mail to this very day: In January, it came in the form of a cover song by nerd rockers Weezer, who paid tribute to “No Scrubs” in their latest record, The Teal Album.
“When I heard it, I loved it!” Chilli told Rolling Stone last month. “It feels really good because when you’re in the studio working, you hope and pray that you make songs that have longevity. And we have, so that’s a blessing. I’m telling you, I wanna reach out to [Weezer] and try to make this performance happen”.
I want to go back to 2012. That is when Pitchfork wrote about FanMail. Fifteen years after its release, they revisited a huge commercial success. Despite it not being the best-reviewed album from TLC, FanMail was groundbreaking and history-making. It is an album that came after a difficult period. Pitchfork discussed the period between 1994’s CrazySexyCool and FanMail:
“When most people think TLC, their brains immediately go to the sounds and images of their 1994 R&B classic CrazySexyCool: "Waterfalls", silk pajamas, "Red Light Special". But, perhaps because I still have a very vivid memory of buying it in a New Jersey mall, my thumb obscuring the Parental Advisory sticker so my mom wouldn't see it, the TLC album I've found myself returning to the most in recent years is FanMail.
It was not the group's greatest success (coming off CrazySexyCool, the first-ever diamond-selling album by a female group, six million units in the U.S. is good-not-great), though FanMail did spawn the mega-hit "No Scrubs", the #1 single "Unpretty", and earned two Grammys. But this record doesn't seem as ingrained in the collective cultural memory of TLC. Maybe because it's something of an inconsistent hodgepodge, or because certain elements of its futuristic aesthetic have not aged particularly well. But when we talk about TLC's current influence on a whole crop of web-minded, Tumblr-savvy, android-obsessed artists, we don't seem to realize how much we're talking about FanMail-- a record that, almost a decade and a half after its release, still sounds hauntingly prescient, like a transmission from the future.
In the years between CrazySexyCool and FanMail, the TLC story got tumultuous. Lopes burned down her boyfriend Andre Rison's house and went to rehab, the group declared bankruptcy at the height of their success thanks to a profoundly shitty recording contract, and internal tensions became almost unbearable. Plenty of other things were going on between 1994 and 1999, behind bedroom doors and in front of flickering screens. Over that five-year span, I added a computer, email address, and an AIM screen name to my life, and by 1999 these things had begun to feel intricately interlaced with my personal identity.
Considering CrazySexyCool and FanMail back-to-back, you can hear these cultural changes take place. A skittish, glitchy album full of distractions, interruptions, and ruptures in consciousness, FanMail was one of the very first pop records to aestheticize the internet. And, like most first times, it was not without awkwardness. Its cover is swathed in not-so-subtle binary code accents and features virtual reality avatar portraits of the ladies. Its beats are gilded with the aged chirps of dial-up connections, and then there's the whole conceit of Vic-E (pronounced "Vicki"), the record's recurring android character who narrates interludes and-- in her shining moment-- raps an entire verse on the track "Silly Ho": "You know you can't get with this…/ Stuck on silly shit/ Boy you know you need to quit." On its surface, FanMail screams "Y2K."
But if you can get past that, the album grapples with something much deeper that reverberates throughout a lot of pop music today. Although the way the group's delight in singing about email, cyberspace, and "the future of music" captures a sense of emergent-technology wonder that's always a little embarrassing in hindsight, FanMail is not nearly as interested in what's gained by technology as it
And no song on the album captures that as masterfully as the title track. "Welcome, we have dedicated our entire album to any person who ever sent us fanmail," Vic-E drones over the song's intro, "TLC would like to thank you for your support. But just like you..."-- and here the human voices join in-- "... they get lonely too." If you unfold the booklet accompanying the FanMail CD, you'll see a poster listing the names of thousands of people who had sent the group fan letters, and in the foreground there's a large image of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli made up to look like computer-generated androids themselves, steely and stoic.
As if to say, "this is your brain on the internet," the atmosphere of "FanMail" teems with disembodied voices and interruptions (shouts of "fanmail!" and "the letters!" nag like a backlog of unanswered messages), while T-Boz's gravelly alto lays out the verses: "I got an email today/ I kinda thought that you forgot about me/ So I wanna hit you back to say/ Just like you, I get lonely too”.
There are a couple of features I want to cover before getting to a review. Vibe took us inside a classic that was “A Futurist Prelude To Digital Era Intimacy”. Their 2019 feature revealed some interesting details and interpretations:
“FanMail, from the sound to the art direction, embodied a timely futuristic aesthetic, as everyone was obsessed with technology’s cultural takeover in the new millennium: remember Y2K hysteria, Napster mp3 file sharing, and the Dot.com boom? On the album’s cover, T-Boz, Chilli and Left Eye‘s faces appear as silver-faced avatars floating above an orbit. A code of numbers are printed across the cover, imagery often associated with The Matrix. (Although FanMail dropped a month before the film hit theaters.)
On the title track, listeners are greeted by Vic-E, the everpresent robotic voice narrating the album: “Just like you, they [TLC] get lonely, too.” She reassures listeners that fame doesn’t stop them from being human. The digitized voice is reminiscent of the “tour guide” on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 album Midnight Marauders. Yet, unlike Tribe, TLC collaborates with the robot, as it contributes background vocals throughout. Austin also sprinkled FanMail with samples of sounds — check “Communicate (Interlude)” and “LoveSick” for examples — he found on the Internet, movies, and devices like printers, he shared with MixOnline.
It was a smart move to modernize, as it had been five years since TLC released its best-selling 1994 album CrazySexyCool. The sultry mix presented a more mature and stripped back follow-up to the colorful, youthful angst of Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip. This five-year gap could have left the group’s fans uninterested, especially if they were releasing in today’s fast-paced consumption environment, in which stans demand new releases on social media after only a year or two. But the time away didn’t hinder TLC. Now 10 years in the game, they managed a successful return by dedicating this project to their fanbase.
“Left Eye came up with the title, and we made it come together creatively as a group, along with Dallas Austin,” T-Boz said in their May 1999 VIBE cover story. “It was like, Let’s write and sing one big fan letter. Let’s put fan names on everything – all the singles, the album cover, T-shirts, mugs. Just show our appreciation.”
Left Eye also chimed in with a transparent business savvy explanation. “Now we know that the way contracts are set up, it’s not really made for artists to get rich from selling records – that’s the company’s one shot to make money,” she explained. “The artist is supposed to use that as an outlet to do merchandising and other things that we never took advantage of because we were too busy sitting in bankruptcy court trying to get a settlement out of LaFace.”
That part. Although TLC were multi-platinum selling artists up until FanMail, they had faced a public financial battle with their management Pebbitone, Inc. and label, LaFace Records. This caused the delay between their sophomore and third efforts. In 1995, the group, who revealed they were “broke” at the 1996 Grammys, filed for bankruptcy in hopes to break their contract and renegotiate a new deal.
They were $3.5 million dollars in debt and earning an 8 percent royalty rate. In November 1996, they settled with Arista and BMG and LaFace for an 18 percent royalty rate. To add to the drama, there were talks of producer Dallas Austin leaving the project because of back-and-forths with TLC and L.A. Reid over the creative direction of the album, the 1999 VIBE cover story stated. Thankfully, the parties resolved their misunderstandings enough to complete one of the biggest albums of the decade.
On 17 tracks, TLC took on sexuality, insecurities, self-reliance, and vulnerability with resistant messaging, their tried and true winning formula. This energy paved the way for Destiny’s Child’s reign in the 2000s, and the transparency R&B singers like SZA, H.E.R. and Summer Walker carry on today. TLC’s defiance gave women of the ‘90s permission to be vocal about the spectrum of their emotions, from their sex drives on “I Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” to revenge cheating on “Creep.” FanMail brought more of those goods.
The most notable “No Scrubs,” also considered pop canon, is a scathing critique on men at bottom of the dating pool. “A scrub is a guy, who thinks he’s fly and is also known as a busta/ always talking about what he wants and just sits on his broke a**,” Chilli belts in opening lines. The no. 1 track became such a phenomenon that it inspired the petty male response, “No Pigeons” from Sporty Thievz, their biggest claim to fame. Former Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka Dianne “Tiny” Harris penned it and Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, also behind Destiny’s Child’s no. 1 song “Bills, Bills, Bills,” produced it.
TLC tapped the legendary Hype Williams for the “No Scrubs” visual. Instead of setting the video in a club where scrubs are likely inhabitants, the visual features the trio in outer-space suits floating through a futuristic setting no scrub could ever reach. Most notably Lopes, who in the video does martial arts while a drone films her, manages to keep the digital theme, even when dissing the guys. “Can’t forget the focus on the picture in front of me/You as clear as DVD on digital TV screens,” Lopes raps.
The wonky bop “Silly Ho” is another anti-playa anthem, in which TLC proclaim they aren’t the kind of women who are scheming for men’s pockets. “I can run a scam before he can/ I am better than a man/ I always keep my game all day,” they chant. TLC keeps demanding respect on the choppy “My Life,” their Janet Jackson Control moment, appropriate given their music industry woes.
TLC breaks from jittery beats and Vic-E assisted numbers for alternative pop, on the album’s second no. 1 hit single “Unpretty,” which tackles insecurities caused by a toxic partner’s body-shaming. T-Boz deads him by summoning self-love: “Maybe get rid of you/ And then I’ll get back to me, yeah.” The track was inspired by a poem T-Boz wrote, Dallas Austin told CNN in 2000. He also spoke on the songs’ folky essence. “I like a lot of alternative music, and when I saw the title, “Unpretty” reminded me of a song somebody like (alternative singer) Ani DiFranco would have (written). I just went at it,” he explained. The crew also gave us sensual beckoning on the mid-tempo groove “Come On Down,” penned by legendary pop songwriter Diane Warren.
The album ends with soulful bop “Don’t Pull Out on Me Yet,” but it’s “Communication (Interlude)” that feels like the proper conclusion. “There’s over a thousand ways/ To communicate in our world today/ And it’s a shame/ That we don’t connect,” they say in a spoken word that offers a foreshadowing to our present human condition. Loneliness is on the rise, and more screen time and less human interaction are being linked to growing depression among American adolescents. “So if you also feel the need/ For us to come together/ Will you communicate with me?” As technological advancements create the feeling of being in closer proximity to more people’s thoughts and happenings, it reminds us that these interactions can be fleeting and one-on-one intimacy with your chosen tribe could never become obsolete.
Although its 1999 original drop date has come and gone, in 2019, FanMail is still a fitting soundtrack for dating in the digital age. Whether they’re making their contact through the passenger sides of cars or down in the DMs, the personalities pointed out on the poignant album, are still walking amongst us, messing with our hearts one way or another. FanMail proved that TLC was more in tune with the future than their pop peers, and will more than likely continue to be”.
COMPLEX dove into FanMail on its fifteenth anniversary in 2012. Many do not know what was happening in the TLC camp. It was a turbulent and trio for the trio. It is amazing that such a cohesive and excellent album was made considering what was happening around them:
“Beneath all of FanMail's visionary veneer, though, TLC's essence shone, and that meant a lot of sensual, assertive songs about integrity and self-esteem. "No Scrubs," the album's lead single and an international smash hit still, was ushered in by a skit called "Whispering Playa." On it, a corny dude at a party tries to holler at the ladies, who respond with incredulous giggles. Its overall mien, a more mature transition from similar sentiments expressed on Oooh… on the TLC Tip, set a precedent for the bossy steezes of stars that marched in their confident footsteps, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ciara, Minaj. And, well sure, "Cyptron" was doing his best Timbaland imitation on "Silly Ho" ("Are You That Somebody?" had swept the world off its feet in June of '98), but its message was one of total independence, and not playing one's self out to sit at the feet of a dude. (Even Vic-E wasn't having it, declaring "I'm OUT" on the bridge.)
Yet, they weren't all hard exterior: the popular, proto-"Pretty Hurts" ballad "Unpretty," written by T-Boz, detailed the decline of a woman's self-esteem, at the hands of a debilitating and emotionally abusive man. With the concept of fan-outreach, TLC was sincerely trying to touch all the bases, crafting fist-in-the-air woman-power anthems, as well as weepy, pillow-hugging singalongs.
Maybe too many of the latter, actually. FanMail came at a tumultuous time for TLC. It was their first album after filing for bankruptcy in '95 and a public beef with their label LaFace. More pressingly, it represented a rift that had developed within the group. Left Eye denounced much of their music via a VIBE Magazine cover story that also revealed Dallas Austin, their longtime producer and the father of Chilli's son, had almost walked off the project. On one hand, it's why FanMail is a strong step for TLC's independence: Then in their late 20s, the women were staking out on their own after being burned by bad management, and some of their choices, such as using producers other than Dallas Austin, weren't amenable to everyone in the group. On the other, it's why FanMail is in a bit of disarray, particularly in the album's ballad-heavy latter half, which was partly, according to Chilli, inspired by Shania Twain. (Bless Shania Twain and new directions, but at some point you sacrifice cohesion.) Left Eye told VIBE, "I cannot stand 100 percent behind this TLC project and the music that is supposed to represent me." (She later complained about the group turning down the song "Heartbreak Hotel," which ended up going platinum for Whitney Houston; it's also worth noting that Britney's "Baby One More Time" was offered to TLC first.)
With the perspective of history, FanMail's gleaming prescience is also slightly somber. Left Eye, never quite satisfied after its release, dropped her first solo album in 2001, a week before Aaliyah died. Eight months later, she, too was dead. The weightless beats that informed FanMail—no doubt stemming from Timbaland's influence—fell so far out of fashion they're coming back in style again only now. Drake covered "FanMail" as "I Get Lonely Too," transforming a populist song about unity and empathy into a navel-gazing, self-contained diary entry.
But on the other hand, this world we now live in is the FanMail dream realized. They can talk to their fans directly every day if they like, and Chilli often does, hitting Twitter for bouts of RTs and answering questions when she's in the mood. Cool T-Boz is characteristically less interactive, offering photos of her day, bon mots, or her opinions on current cultural happenings.
The FanMail concept was Left Eye's idea in the first place, though, and while the world she left behind remains only through relics, her bandmates could resurrect her through hologram if they so chose. (They won't. But here we are, the future.) But in a way we really have reached that utopia, talking to each other every single day, separated only by fiber-optics and our own imaginations.
"Communication is the key to life," declared Left Eye on her interlude. "Communication is the key to love. Communication is the key to us. There's over a thousand ways to communicate in our world today. And it's a shame that we don't connect”.
I am going to end with a review from NME. They shared their thoughts about one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Twenty-five years after its release, FanMail still sounds like nothing else! I would urge anyone unfamiliar with this album to check it out. As a teenager when it came out, I was instantly struck and hooked! The more I listen to the album, the more that I get from it:
“TLC must find it consoling that they can slap stickers on their baby deer-eyed cyber sleeve saying The Biggest-Selling Female Trio Of All Time. In the deluge of midriff-thrusting, control-girls-on-a-sexy-urban-R&B-plus-rap-grit; tip, it's been somewhat eclipsed that they carved the template.
When T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli strutted on to Babyface and LA Reid's Atlanta label in 1992 they gave definitive shape to female hip-hop attitude in pop. They wore the condoms, took baggy strides into videoland, trilled about AIDS'n'drugs ('Waterfalls') and topped out with an accidental black feminist distress flare when Left Eye burned down her sports star boyfriend's $2million mansion.
The phrase 'go girl' belongs to them, so it's fair enough that four years on from 'CrazySexyCool' they've softened a little and broadened out. 'Fanmail''s overarching 'cyber concept' pushes towards the kind of electronic funk that Prince used to excel at, but no amount of robot FX and virtual fourth members can disguise the solid pop core.
A posse of producers shamelessly boost harmonies and razor beats and the songwriting team cover the waterfront ruthlessly. The acoustics'n'tinkling of 'I Miss You So Much' are Celine Dion for the projects. 'Unpretty' rocks like Hanson. 'Shout' is a close cousin of 'When Doves Cry' and the very mellow interludes of 'Come On Down' and 'Dear Lie' drip with enough spare syrup to reinvent Five Star as street coolsters.
Elsewhere, however, the ruffness levels rise considerably as they contribute to pop's discourse on dating with a cheeky candour that Brit imitators could never ever muster. 'Silly Ho''s minimal funk lays down the law on not being "a chicken-head". The mandolin and beats marvel 'No Scrubs' applies vigorous elbow to men who think they're big, but really live with Mom ('a scrub'), 'I'm Good At Being Bad' blends superfly soul with Donna Summerisms and Left Eye's sly 'bad bitch' lewdness - "A good man is hard to find/Well actually a hard man is so good to find...".
The pop/sex on our own terms manifesto is given a final underscoring by the twinkling soul snog ballad finale 'Don't Pull Out On Me' which combines their trademark pliant, soft-focus purring with explicit, in-control instructions to the boys on how to do the late-night creep properly.
Maturity and cyber tips have not diminished them. Seven years on TLC are still showing the Honeyz, Saints and Spices how real grrrls do it.
8/10”.
On 23rd February, FanMail turns twenty-five. A classic marks its quarter-century. 1999 gave us so many classics. Right there with there with the best of them, TLC’s final album with Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes is a work of brilliance! I have very fond memories of it. I hope that TLC mark the twenty-fifth anniversary and recall their memories. Anyone who has not heard the album needs to…
LISTEN to it right away.