FHM Magazine
September 10, 2001
Many an unfortunate man's nickname is cruelly derived from his most frightening physical anomaly - the blotchy birthmark, miniscule weener or inch-long stumpy legs. Not so with the lovely Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, however, the 30-year-old rapper gracing the world's best-selling R'n'B lady trio, TLC. Her moniker has a far more friendly hook. "Left Eye came from a man who decided that my left eye was more beautiful than my right," she says wistfully, denying it had anything to do with the fact that she used to bounce around stage wearing glasses with a condom drooping over the left lens. Now the proud owner of four Grammys and part of the biggest-selling female group of all time - 20 million albums and counting - Lisa has briefly stepped aside from fellow group members Chilli and T-Boz, to release her debut solo album Supernova, out later this month.
Gaining notoriety for being the "wildest woman in pop", Lisa was fined $6,000, sentenced to five years probation and ordered to attend an alcohol rehabilitation programme after burning down the $1.5 million mansion of her fiancé, American football star Andre Rison, in June 1994.
So tell us, what exactly happened when you burned your fiancé's place down?
He had been spending the night out with women and at clubs and stuff and I would sit at home and be the patient wife who was supposed to put up with this stuff. We were both drinking and we got into a terrible argument. I used to suffer from black-outs where the next day I'd wake up and not remember what had happened. I went into the bathroom, saw a pile of sneakers and I snapped. I burnt up the sneakers, threw them in the tub and the next thing I knew the tub had melted. In less than ten minutes we could see black smoke pouring out of the house.
We've, er, been doing some snooping and found a couple of crazy rumours about you on the net. According to one website, you had a fight with Chelsea Clinton at the White House…
No, that's not true. Somebody please tell me nobody actually printed that. I heard another one that me and Lenny Kravitz were in the bedroom doing all kinds of things. I've only met the man once at an award show.
Have you ever had a crazed stalker?
There was this one guy who used to live in New York. He stole a van, drove to Atlanta, came straight to my house, broke in, stole a couple of trophies and staked the house out. It was like in a horror movie, you know, when you look out of your window and you see someone on your porch and then two seconds later you turn around and they're gone. Then someone's calling the house and you pick up the phone and it's the same person and when you look out the window they're sitting in the front driveway in the car.
In between TLC's second and third albums, the group filed for bankruptcy - had you been having huge spending sprees?
No, we were never extravagant spenders. I mean we would get our advance and it would be a million dollars to split between the group, that's $330,000 a piece, but we're in the 49 per cent tax bracket, our lawyers are $400 an hour. Our accountants take five per cent of every dime we make. Our manager wants 15 per cent. By the time we count our money or what's left, shit, we're not even making as much money as a doctor or a lawyer, or we weren't.
Did you win the bankruptcy case?
We were close, but the record company stepped up and offered us a pretty fair deal and the other two wanted to take it.
If you quit TLC altogether, what would you do?
Some people like fame and glory, some of us want to reach out and touch people. I'm interested in educating people. I'd write a book or start a charity, travel the world and feed people.