The Challenge - You Want a Piece of Me? (Sister 2 Sister Magazine 2000)

However, before we start, let's read the full article T-Boz and Chilli did for 'Entertainment Weekly' without Left Eye in their December 1999 issue that helped sparked this whole article. This was one of their first interviews without her, and they had grown very frustrated with her. Between their own personal issues with Left Eye, to Left Eye's issues with their record label, her relationship with the public, and wanting to do solo work, while balancing TLC, to them, they felt like she was jeopardizing the group, and wasn't really working with them as she believed she was, especially with outside influences like Marshall Lorenzo Martin. T-Boz and Chilli vented under EW article "Unpretty".

(TLC, Entertainment Weekly, November 1999)

"Unpretty"

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in cyberspace. As TLC kick off their first tour in nearly five years to a less-than-capacity crowd in Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on Oct. 22, a crescendo of computerized bleeps and blats envelops the arena. A mammoth robotic vixen — Virtual Vice (pronounced ”Vicky”) by name — appears on the huge screen at the rear of the stage. It’s disorienting and dramatic, a Matrix moment. You half-expect to hear Laurence Fishburne welcoming you to the real world, but soon Vice is introducing the flesh-and-blood stars of the evening: Lisa ”Left Eye” Lopes, 28 (”Personality: crazy,” Vice intones), Rozonda ”Chilli” Thomas, 29 (”Personality: sexy”), and Tionne ”T-Boz” Watkins, 29 (”Personality: cool”), the Atlanta-based trio whose multiplatinum third album, FanMail, has spawned two of 1999’s most inescapable anthems, ”No Scrubs” and ”Unpretty.”

As the group launch into set opener ”Silly Ho,” they dance with jerky, machinelike precision, their shimmering silver outfits making them look like androids. You find yourself fearing they’ll take this Devo-like shtick too far. Not to worry…

”What’s up with the lights?” demands Lopes testily between songs, calling the attention of 5,500 fans to some unseen glitch. ”This ain’t how we programmed the lights for the show.”

Ah, Left Eye. The most controversial member of the group — it was she who, in 1994, was arrested for burning down the house of her then beau, former Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison — can be counted on to inject some chaos into the mix. Where the baby-faced Chilli projects a palpable sweetness and T-Boz is a combination earth mother and homegirl, Left Eye radiates danger and unpredictability. Prior to her solo spot in the show, during which she performs a magic act, she rattles off definitions of the word crazy: ”Unsound of mind, mentally unbalanced, deranged…” She savors each phrase like a choice morsel.

As it turns out, her magic tricks won’t cost David Copperfield any sleep. But one of them provides an analogy with what’s really going on with TLC these days.

”Here we have a string that’s been treated with nitroglycerin,” says Left Eye, grinning loopily. ”And here we have a lighter….”

One week earlier, Chilli and T-Boz are sitting high above the crisp autumnal splendor of Central Park in a plush suite in New York’s Trump International Hotel & Tower. Conspicuous in her absence is Left Eye, who’s flown home to Atlanta after a fitful few days of press and radio appearances. It’s noted that 48 hours before, Lopes had arrived late to and left early from an EW photo shoot, seeming to hold herself apart from the group. She was also a no-show for TLC’s appearance on MTV’s Total Request Live earlier in the week. Such apparent lack of unity feels particularly significant now, with the group embarking on their first-ever headlining tour, and just months after a Vibe cover story in which Left Eye proclaimed she’d ”graduated from this era” and could not ”stand 100 percent behind this TLC project.” With Left Eye working on her first solo album, inquiring minds want to know: Is the biggest-selling female trio in history in danger of being reduced to a duo?

The question elicits a textbook pregnant pause, during which Chilli and T-Boz exchange pointed glances. With a sigh that roughly translates as screw it, Chilli decides to let it all hang out.

“Honestly, we’re tired of saying things, covering up, making it seem like it’s one thing and it’s really not. We’re stressed.”

T-Boz: “And Lisa doesn’t respect…”

“…respect the whole group. TLC has to stick together…”

“She doesn’t stick with us.”

“She doesn’t stick with us. And we have to argue to bring her back and focus…. She wants to go solo and do other things, so that’s what she’s focused on, which is not fair to us.”

Once the emotional floodgates open, the pair vent — often heatedly — for 45 minutes, railing about Lopes’ alleged derelictions and disloyalty, and at one point break into an a cappella version of the old O’Jays hit “Backstabbers.” They tell how, prior to the recording of FanMail, Lopes sent their label, LaFace, a letter saying she was quitting, an action that temporarily froze the group’s finances before she changed her mind (“The most evil, selfish, heartless thing anybody could ever do,” says Chilli); how she seems to undercut them by dissing them in interviews and ditching rehearsals; how she’s bitter that every one of the eight songs she’d written for FanMail was rejected; how she’s become distressingly capricious about decisions that affect them all.

T-Boz says they’re “tired, tired, tired” of it. “We want her in the group, and she knows that,” Chilli continues. “So it’s almost like she feels she has the power to dangle meat in front of some hungry dogs, like, ‘I can do what I want, because I know they want me here.’ So she takes advantage. We’re covering up for her because we don’t want the fans to be mad at us. But we’re mad at her.”

“We lied live on MTV, saying she was sick,” adds T-Boz, referring to the TRL taping. “She was not sick.”

“She was at the hotel, upset [with us],” says Chilli. “Left Eye is only concerned about Left Eye.”

The tirade is fearsome. A TLC handler drifts into the suite and turns a whiter shade of pale at the tenor of the conversation. “You guys gonna talk about the tour at all?” she prompts, hopefully.

“We talked about the tour the other day,” snaps Chilli. “This is very important. What was I saying?”

Er, essentially that Lopes is jeopardizing what TLC have worked for since the release of their first album, Ooooooohhh…On the TLC Tip, in 1992. Surely, though, with the tour about to start and millions of dollars at stake, she wouldn’t jump ship now. Would she?

“She has commitments that she has to [honor],” asserts Chilli. “We just want to let everybody know what we go through. This is what T-Boz and Chilli have to deal with.”

Producer Dallas Austin, often referred to as the fourth member of TLC, chuckles when asked about the Left Eye situation. “They’re like sisters,” says Austin, the father of Chilli’s 2-year-old son, Tron. “I’ve seen this for years. Lisa started playing into a lot of bad stuff in the press because she feels it’s her job. She’ll admit it, too, like, ‘It’s my job to keep the press going.’ She does this wacky stuff, and the next day she’ll change her mind and the girls will get p—ed. They did that Vibe story and Lisa said, ‘I’m not into TLC.’ Then she does another article and says, ‘I love the girls to death and I’ll never leave.’… Lisa does it as a part of her character, kind of like the guys in Oasis.”

Just what makes this apparent human time bomb tick? Born in Philly, Lopes was raised in a household dominated by an alcoholic father, and she gravitated to music as an escape. In 1991, she and T-Boz were in an embryonic version of TLC. They caught the attention of Perri “Pebbles” Reid, then wife of LaFace co-owner L.A. Reid, who became their manager. When Chilli signed on as the third member, TLC was born.While Lopes’ first few years with the trio were scandal-free, her reputation as a loose cannon took hold after she was convicted of torching Rison’s house in 1994 (a crime for which she was fined and sentenced to five years’ probation). Soon after, she entered rehab for her own drinking problem.

Austin confirms that Lopes was angered to the point of destruction by the fact that none of her songs were chosen for inclusion on FanMail. “She turned in eight songs, and they weren’t up to par,” he says. “It’s crazy, because she’d quit the group, then a couple of days later be like, ‘I’m back.’… She cries wolf a lot.”

And what of the wolf-child herself? “Wow,” she says some days later, when confronted with Chilli’s and T-Boz’s charges. She takes a few moments to collect her thoughts, then, with seeming indifference to her groupmates frustrations, coolly acknowledges a history of intragroup disagreements. She readily admits to being willful, to missing rehearsals, to being preoccupied with a solo project, and, perhaps most significantly, to quitting TLC. “I guess it was about a year and a half ago, right before we started working on FanMail. The process was taking such a long time, the record company wasn’t really adamant about pushing TLC, so that was my attempt to raise eyebrows and get some attention. I wanted to make [LaFace] think, How important is TLC? Is it important enough that if one of us were to leave, you guys would get on the ball? That was my way of doing it. As soon as that happened, chaos broke out. As soon as I sent the letter, T-Boz and Chilli called me and said, ‘Please don’t leave the group, let’s just do it one more time.’ I said, ‘That’s not a problem.’ From my perspective, me sending that letter did not take away or add to the relationship me and Chilli and T-Boz had. The problem was that we had different views and we wanted to go in separate directions.”

Just how different are those views? Lopes claims she never wanted to tour in the first place. Her TRL sick-out was a form of protest, an unwillingness to play the promotion game. “I don’t think [touring] is the best move for us. We have an agreement where we can’t make big money decisions unless it’s unanimous. But sometimes they like to think that two thirds rule. That’s the part that p—ed me off.”

Obviously, there is plenty of ill will all around. Given the unpretty picture painted by Chilli and T-Boz (who joke about replacing Left Eye with Virtual Vice if things don’t improve), and Left Eye’s righteous, if unruly, stance, it’ll take a load of tender loving care to hold these women together. The pressure-cooker conditions of their tour — which includes 17 U.S. shows in 1999 and will continue globally through October of next year — won’t help. But Austin, for one, is keeping the faith: “At the end of the day, all of them know TLC is their home. Left Eye wants attention. But she knows that if she drops out of this thing, that attention’s not gonna be there.”

Let’s see, how did that song go? Don’t go chasing waterfalls…. "

And 'The Challenge' started there, with Entertainment Weekly speaking with Left Eye in regards of this situation in another article released later in November called "TLC: Three to Tangle" with Left Eye firing back

"TLC: Three to Tangle"

Is TLC ready for the WWF?

Well, it sure looks like round 2 has begun. In EW’s Nov. 5 feature ”Unpretty,” the chart-topping gal trio showed that they’re far from united sisterhood these days. Long-smoldering tensions have flared up and are threatening the stability of TLC’s current tour, their first in nearly five years. Group members Rozonda ”Chilli” Thomas and Tionne ”T-Boz” Watkins, both 29, took the EW story as an occasion to lash out at their mercurial partner, Lisa ”Left Eye” Lopes, 28, claiming Lopes is a loose cannon whose erratic behavior is dragging the group down. Among the bombshells they dropped: Lopes quit TLC prior to the recording of FanMail, their multiplatinum album, temporarily freezing the group’s finances.

Now Lopes is firing back. On Nov. 11 the singer sent EW a letter characterizing Thomas and Watkins’ statements as ”merely shouts from those who only have a fractional understanding of what business is in this business.” Lopes then went on to make a startling proposition to her fellow band members and TLC’s label, LaFace Records. ”I challenge Tionne ‘Player’ Watkins and Rozonda ‘Hater’ Thomas to an album entitled The Challenge,” writes Lopes, ”a 3 CD set [consisting of] three solo albums,” one from each TLC member. Lopes proposed LaFace offer a $1.5 million prize to the ”winner,” who would be determined by Billboard.

”I was thinking we could release three singles at once and see whose does the best,” says Lopes in a subsequent phone interview, ”but I’d have to talk to [LaFace co-owner] L.A. Reid to see what his ideas are.”

While Reid declines to comment, LaFace COO Mark Shimmel isn’t completely dismissing the scheme. ”We’re always open to new marketing ideas and concepts,” he says, ”but it’s got to be something where everybody sits down and agrees to it, not something that’s discussed long distance in the middle of a concert tour.” For their part, Thomas and Watkins released this statement: ”We think it’d be best to paraphrase the great poet Iyanla Vanzant…. ‘At a time when unity is so desperately needed it is significantly lacking…. Unity does not mean we will all believe in or do the same things. It means we will agree to do something without battling over how and why.”’

Though it sounds like her gauntlet won’t be picked up, Lopes remains defiant. ”I just want to present the challenge—they don’t have to take it,” says the woman who was once arrested for burning down a boyfriend’s house. ”I just want credit for my ideas, because I am the creative force behind TLC.”

How this will affect the tour remains to be seen. Even before the current fireworks, the intra-group tensions were evident in their shows. At various points during their Oct. 31 gig at the Baltimore Arena (for which roughly 3,000 of the venue’s 12,500 seats remained empty), Watkins and Thomas high-fived each other while pointedly ignoring Lopes—who, in turn, did her best to avoid all contact with her partners. And during the rendition of ”What About Your Friends,” Watkins glared at Lopes while singing the lyrics ”What about your friends/Will they stand their ground/Will they let you down again?”

Better question: Can TLC keep from imploding? “I hope so,” says Shimmel. “The yin and the yang of what pushes at TLC also keeps them together—and they’re still together.” For now, anyway. But given Lopes’ penchant for playing with fire, both literally and metaphorically, how long can that last?

(Additional reporting by Craig Seymour)

An excerpt from LISA “LEFT EYE” LOPES’ Nov. 11 letter to EW:

…Let it be understood that I am interested in making multimillion-dollar business deals. It seems that my two group members are not. This poses a serious conflict. Therefore, I propose The Challenge.

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 1, 2000…. I also challenge [TLC’s producer] Dallas “The Manipulator” Austin…to produce all of the material and do it at a fraction of his normal rate. As I think about it, I’m sure LaFace [Records] would not mind throwing in a 1.5 million dollar prize for the winner…. Billboard will determine the winner….

After careful analysis of the tangled political web woven by my associates, I place the burden of TLC’s future in their hands. The challenge is on the table ladies and gentlemen….

Sincerely, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes

And now, the FULL January 2000 issue Lisa did with Sister 2 Sister Magazine infamously known as 'The Challenge', typed out!

Lisa retaliates to T-Boz & Chilli's EW issue where they vent about their frustrations with her. She says it broke her heart as she talks about how she believed the 'FanMail' Tour WASN'T a good idea, sending the letter to LaFace in the mid 90s that she was leaving the group to get FanMail going, her contributions to the group, recording 10 songs for FanMail that didn't make the album (including "It's Alright" and "Let's Just Do it"), Chilli player-hating on Blaque and "The Cut", how she stood by Dallas when he tried charging them mad money to exclusively produce FanMail, and much much more topics!

"The Challenge"

‘You Want a Piece of Me?” - Left Eye Blasts TLC

J = Jamie

L = Lisa

I was over in Paris for a few days, but I can never get away from the scoop-de-doop. My office called and said I had to get on the phone to do an interview with Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. She was upset about something that her TLC “sisters” had said about her in Entertainment Weekly magazine on November 5th. Chilli was quoted saying “Honestly, we’re tired of saying things, covering up, and making it seem like it’s one thing and it’s really not. We’re stressed.” Then T-Boz said, “And Lisa doesn’t respect...” Chilli finishes her sentence, “… respect the whole group. TLC has to stick together...” Then T-Boz said, “She doesn’t stick with us.” Chilli added, “And we have to argue to bring her back and focus… She wants to go solo and so other things, so that’s what she’s focused on, which is not fair to us.”

Then Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Once the emotional floodgates open, the pair vent – often heatedly – for 45 minutes, railing about Lopes’ alleged dereliction and disloyalty, and at one point break into an a cappella version of the O’ Jays hit “Backstabbers.”

The publication finally got Left Eye’s response a few days later, but she called to tell me that what T-Boz and Chilli said about her really broke her heart. She wanted to respond in Sister 2 Sister. And boy! What a response – Left Eye style. You know there’s lots of juice in this here interview, but the center of what she spelled out was a challenge to T-Boz and Chilli, a challenge that will show who’s the real record seller in TLC. “Who da man,” as the guys would say. She always says she’s the creative force behind TLC. Let’s see what Left Eye has on her mind:

Jamie: Girl, you are so beautiful in that video, “Unpretty”. Then the Donell Jones video…hot! You were workin’ it. Lisa: Thank you.

J: How’s the tour doing? L: It’s doing good in some areas and not so good in others. Our show is incredible, but the tour was not properly promoted. So let’s say, we’re doing an average of about 3,000 people in every city.

J: What did you all expect? It should have been more than that? L: Yeah. We’re doing venues that seat 12,000 to 15,000 people, so you can imagine how empty it looks with only 3,000 people in every city.

J: Who’s on the tour with you guys? L: Destiny’s Child, K-Ci and JoJo were scheduled to be on the tour. I don’t know what happened with that, but it’s just us, Destiny’s Child, and Ideal.

J: How come it’s not being properly promoted? Whose fault is that, the promoters? L: It would have to be the promoters fault.

J: What were some of the problems? It seems like it would be easy for you all to do a tour. The record sales are up to what now? L: We’re up to about 7 million worldwide and about 4.5 million in the States.

J: That’s wonderful. So what was hard about getting the tour together? L: Well let’s see… Let me tell you the first mistake that was made. We were promised a guarantee of $250,000 a show for TLC as a group and that was through Al Haymon and he forwarded us some money to get started – you know, to put our dancers in rehearsals and get a staff together. So we immediately went into spending money and putting this big production together. Well about three weeks before we went out on the road, we didn’t have a package. We were originally supposed to get out with Christina Aguilera and Destiny’s Child and when Christina Aguilera backed out for her own reasons, our guarantees came down to half of what we were promised. So that’s $125,000 a night and we only do three shows a week because the way we routed the tour was so we could have breaks so that Tionne wouldn’t get sick. [T-Boz has sickle cell anemia.] So there’s not a lot of money being made comparing it to what you have to put out.

J: What do you mean? L: Well, let’s say we spend about $400,000 a week to keep the show on the road. We have a staff of about 50 or more people. That includes dancers, road manager, production manager, all of the above. And it also includes renting the buses, hotels, per diems...all of that adds up to almost $400,000 a week. Now if we’re making only $125,000 a night and we’re only doing 3 or 4 shows a week, you add it up. You know, it equals zero. At the end of the day, there’s no profit. So we were presented with this problem before we left out on the road, but Tionne, Chilli and Bill [TLC’s manager] figured that it would be better to go out on the road, put on a great show, and get better guarantees for next year and hope for the great reviews and things of that nature. But it wasn’t properly promoted. So we just have a lot of odds against us.

J: When the three of them agreed to do the tour, how did you feel about it? L: I didn’t feel good about it at all. This is our fourth tour, and in the beginning, yeah it was exciting. It was fun, it’s “let’s go out, let’s put on a show.” We lost every tour. Usually it’s Tionne who gets sick and we end up spending a couple of weeks off and having to make up for those two weeks. And we usually come out with a break-even number at the end of the day. So this time, I thought, let’s be smarter, you know. But it’s a democracy over here in the TLC camp. So when two decide that they want to do something, and one is really not feeling it, it usually goes in the direction of the two whether it’s the more logical thing or not.

J. Do Tionne and Chilli normally agree and you don’t? L: They normally do agree with each other. It’s usually me, the X-Factor, the unpredictable one. You know how people always fear the unknown? That’s me. They have this thing where they’re not really digging me and who I am right now. I guess we could say a lot of things, but it all boils down to jealousy and envy.

J: Why would they be jealous of you? Is that from “The Cut”? Or because of Blaque and that you have a group? L: That question I can’t really answer. I don’t know why. We all have personal endeavors and we all have solo things that we’re working on. I have Blaque, I did “The Cut”, Tionne did a book, she has an animation that she’s working on, Chilli did a Coach campaign, she’s in a movie with Chevy Chase. But for some reason they stated in the Entertainment Weekly article that Left Eye only cares about Left Eye and her solo project – as if everyone wasn’t trying to do things on the side. And what’s wrong with that?

J: Were you there in the room when they said that or did they interview you all individually? L: No, I was not there. I was very surprised. I was heartbroken.

J: Really? L: Yes. I never would have thought that they’d get stressed to the point where they’d vent in magazines, you know? I know how it is when you have PTS – Post Traumatic Stress. You vent, you let out your anger. But I seem to be the scapegoat. Blame it on Left Eye.

J: Have you talked to them since then? L: Not really. We haven’t been communicating.

J: So what do you all do? You all have the individual buses I know because T-Boz called me a couple of weeks ago and told me that. You all go where you have to go and then you go off on the buses, go do the show and then get back on your individual buses? L: Right, but that has nothing to do with anything. I mean that is just for our own comfort.

J: But what I’m saying, you guys never have any time together where you are all together and hanging out? L: No. Actually we never really hung out on our personal and private time. Usually we spend TLC time with TLC and then we’d spend personal and private time with our family and friends.

J: Well Dallas [Austin] said in the Entertainment Weekly something about you playing with the press. Do you like that’s true? L: Absolutely not. I mean I’ve always been the type of person to speak my mind. I don’t practice fronting and lying, so when I say something in the press, it’s from my heart. It doesn’t change. I think that he is misunderstanding what he has read and he has put his own interpretation on some of the things that I have said.

J: Why wouldn’t your management try to get you all together to sit down and try to talk things out? Have they tried? L: No. Not really. Yeah, we’ve been asked before. Sometimes we sit down and talk, but sometimes we find that talking doesn’t always help.

J: Do you think that you have led to the bad energy in the group? When did all this happen? I remember when you sent the letter in saying that you wanted to leave the group. Someone said that’s your way of trying to get them to pay more attention to the group. Is it? L: Yes it was. There was a four year period in between the second album and the third album. For a year we were in court with LaFace, Chilli had a baby, and then there were maybe two and half years worth of time we were supposed to be getting the album together. But it wasn’t until May 1997 when we really got into the studio and started recording anything. Two years before that, I came up with the concept for ‘FanMail’. Then we went through this big negotiation deal with Dallas that took 10 months, so there was a lot of time that just floated by. I’m very pro-active as opposed to reactive. I was the person who was trying to initiate things and move this project along a little bit quicker. There was a point where no one was really producing anything for TLC and that’s when I took it upon myself to get some producers together and turn in 10 tracks so that I can try and get an idea of what direction TLC wanted to go in.

J: You paid for that yourself? L: Yes I did. Of course all 10 songs were rejected.

J: Now how did you feel about that, because “Unpretty” wasn’t rejected and there’s something else on there that’s T-Boz’s right? Did you feel jealousy behind that? Do you get jealous? L: No. It’s not even about being jealous because my songs were rejected. I wrote 8 songs on the first album, four songs on the second album, I contributed a lot of ideas so I just felt that if – me being a member in the group and being a very instrumental player in this TLC thing – you would think that politics wouldn’t play as big of a part as they do play, which does not always fall back on Tionne and Chilli. Politics get involved and we can owe that to the real players in the game when it comes to placing songs on the albums and stuff like that. It almost like you have a pie and it’s a TLC pie. You put TLC’s name on it because that’s who’s going to sell the pie, but every piece in the pie has already been designated. You understand what I’m saying? It’s an ongoing battle to try and put our creative input in on these projects.

J: Is it like that with all groups or is it just bad luck with TLC you think? L: No. I just think that when you’re dealing with a lot of money, it just gets like that in any situation, in any business.

J: How can you all protect yourself from something like that? Is there any way? L: Well, we’d have to stand as a unit and fight as a team. [But] that’s not happening.

J: Well, what do you think is going to come out of this in the end? Do you think that you all are going to continue to tour or what? L: Touring was slim as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Nobody can explain why it’s so necessary to tour if we’re not going to make any money. I love my fans but I have to feed my family, you know, and we all have different motivations for wanting to be on tour. Mine is to just do the business-smart thing. I’m not sure what Tionne and Chilli’s motivations are.

J: When you did the 10 songs, Left Eye, you said that you paid for them. How are you able to pay because remember you all got a settlement of $2 million and you had to pay $800,000 out of it for Andre’s house. [Lisa accidentally burned down her former boyfriend’s house.] L: It’s just the way you deal. I picked some very good producers who were not known, so they weren’t charging me. The only thing I had to pay for was studio time.

J: So they were just hoping that their songs would get picked up by TLC, which was a chance that they took, right? L: Well not even that. We were just hoping that if those songs didn’t get picked up, there was potential to put these guys back in the studio and do more songs. Of the 10 songs that I turned in, a couple of them were definitely smashing, but sometimes that’s just the way the game goes.

J: Do you think that your fans think you’re being selfish? L I don’t know, but I’m not a selfish person at all. Actually I’m kind to a fault. And I think that’s why sometimes these things blow out of proportion, because you give in. And though I stand up for everything that I believe in, when it’s a two against one thing, I kind of just go with the flow. But sometimes people take kindness for a weakness and they take advantage of you. But getting back to these songs that I turned in. I would like to add a comment to this article that everybody should know: They tried to dismiss my songs as if they were not up to par when in fact one of the tracks that were not accepted on our ‘Fan Mail’ album was “Where My Girls At.” So a lot of it has to do with player hating. Another song that they turned down was that song that Whitney Houston did, “Heartbreak Hotel.” That was our song. They turned down that smash!

J: Well did Blaque take any of those songs? L: No. Actually, I tried t get “Where My Girls At” for Blaque because I thought that was a smash and 702 eventually ended up getting it. But I remember when I put my calls out to Missy. So hopefully we can work together in the future because I think she’s really talented.

J: What else in the Entertainment Weekly article bothered you? L: The entire article bothered me.

J: Well you were interviewed in the article, right? L: Yes. I was interviewed a week later. I was interviewed to defend myself. The writer called me and said that he was printing the article and before he wrote it he would like to give me the opportunity to defend myself because Tionne and Chilli made a lot of statements. He didn’t exactly get down to the extent of the statements that they made, so I picked up the article when it came out a week later.

J: So was the interview scheduled like that? Did you know that they were doing that interview? L: There was an interview scheduled and I had a meeting, so my portion of the interview was to be done at a later time. A week later the guy called me and, to my surprise, it was so I could defend myself.

J: You know T-Boz told me that her whole emphasis is TLC right now. That’s what she wants to make happen. So this came as a surprise to me that this article came out. L: That she wants to make TLC happen? That’s her whole emphasis?

J: Yeah, right now. She told me about the cartoons and her other projects but she said right now TLC is basically #1 on her agenda. L: Okay, that may be true. I don’t know. I can’t speak for Tionne.

J: Yeah, but that’s why I’m surprised that this came up. You see what I’m saying? Now, do you all think that you can survive on your own or you as a rapper or what? L: I don’t know what they think about themselves, but me personally, yes without a doubt. Not just as a rapper or a producer, [but] as a creative force. I am very humble, so this is a little weird to say this about myself, but I do recognize myself as the creative force behind TLC and as far as I’m concerned, creativity has no end. As long as people need ideas, I will continue to do business, whether it’s rapper, producer, television show, it doesn’t matter to me. But TLC definitely is not the end-all as far as I’m concerned because the way I look at it is I’m the center of my universe and TLC revolves around me.

J: Now when the girls read that, they are going to be p#ssed off about what you just said. L: Well it’s the truth. Do you want me to go down the list? Do you want me to let you know what I have contributed to this TLC thing from the beginning?

J: Give me three. L: Oh man, there’s more than three things. Every album that we drop, it’s always a conceptual album: ‘Fan Mail’ - dedicating it to the fans and putting a million names on the album, my idea. Condoms – my idea. Bright colors – mine. Crazy, sexy, cool – my idea. Store lines for the show – mine. And a list of other things.

J: Don’t you all have two or three albums to do for LaFace? L: Yes. There’s three more albums.

Jamie: Will you all be able to do that? L: Well you know, yes we can. And I will give you another example of what comes from the creative force. The reason why this article is so important to me, Jamie, I would like to, from ‘Sister 2 Sister’, I would like to present the first challenge in the history of music. I challenge TLC to a three CD set. Now that answers your first question about out commitment to LaFace. Now this three CD set would consist of three solo albums and I challenge them to have this done by October of next year – 2000 – because we always have a problem with timing. Everyone likes to take four or five years to do things and, like I said, I’m very proactive and I like to get things done. I challenge them to have it done. I challenge LaFace Records to put a $1 million prize on the winner – to release three singles at once.

J: The winner between the three of you? L: Between the three of us.

J: How would that work? Who would be the winner? L: Well you could determine it in several ways. Probably the best way would be to release three singles at the same time and see who does the best on the charts.

J: Oh, the three of you all? Lisa you’re a mess! [laughing] L: I mean it’s a challenge, you know what I’m saying? Everybody wants to get out. Everybody wants to talk smack. It’s put up or shut up. I also challenge Dallas “the manipulator” Austin. I challenge him to produce all of their stuff like he tries to produce all of TLC’s, because I have an industry of producers who will roll him up and smoke his *#s. And, I challenge any editor and/or hater to find one article where I publicly spoke bad about Tionne and Chilli, because there isn’t one that exists. They printed that I’d been dissing them and that’s not true. That is not the truth, so this is me stepping to the plate to challenge everyone. And as far as I’m concerned, if they’re scared, they need to say that they’re scared. If they’re not, then they can take the challenge.

J: That’s quite a bit of a challenge, Miss Thang. You came up with that by yourself? L: Yes [laughing]. I mean what else do you expect someone to do when you back them up in the corner? They come out boxing.

J: Your mom is married to Tionne’s uncle, right? Has this caused any conflict between the two of them? L: Nope. No conflict.

J: So they stay out of this? L: Yes.

J: What does your mom say to you? Do you go to her for advice? L: Sometimes I do talk to her. Um, she thinks that there are apologies needed.

J: I think that you all represent so much money. I mean the money possibilities are enormous. People just adore looking at you all. The music is good, some people would say, “We may not like each other but let’s make this money.” You know what I mean? It just saddens me that this happens all the time. I remember back when you said that you were with Pebbles. Do you think this would have happened with Pebbles if you all were still with her? L: There’s no telling.

J: I remember you all were so happy when you first got the deal and everything. And there have been so many problems. L: Yeah, there have been. And you know, usually, when we deliver messages to our fans, usually, the consensus of all of our messages have to do with speaking from your heart, doing what you believe in, doing what makes you feel comfortable, doing what makes you happy. And I practice that and for a long time. But I’ve been muffled because Tionne and Chilli had a big problem with me speaking out about the problems that we were having, which were not to the extent of the problems that we have now, but the little things. Like people would ask us, “Do you guys ever argue or get into disagreements?” And their first thing was, “No! No we don’t.” I always thought, “if we told the truth and let everyone know that disagreements are okay, but at the end of the day we are still together, maybe that’s something that they can take and learn.” So they have always been against me voicing my opinion,. So when I released my statement in the Vibe article, part of the reason why I said that that would be my last interview is because I’m not down with faking and the fronting. I wanted to speak my mind and they were not happy with that, so in an attempt to try to please my group members, I decided, well this will be my last interview. I also said that I wasn’t 100 percent down with the TLC project. Now people took that as if I was saying that I wasn’t down with TLC. Not the case.

J: What was the case? L: I was not down with the project. I was not down with the way the political games were going on, the amount of control that we fought for and not having it… Those were the things that I was not down with.

J: So you’re saying that the problems that you all had before were not as extensive as the ones that you’re having now? You all had problems, but now you’re having problems amongst yourselves? L: As long as we stand as a unit, no problem is bigger than us. But once we have been conquered and divided, that’s when the real problems set in.

J: And you think that it’s outside forces that help divide you? L: Yes, amongst other things. Everyone changes and grows – and we definitely have grown in three separate directions – but that doesn’t mean at the end of the day we can’t all make smart business decisions and move forward as a corporation.

J: Lisa, it seems like the way you like to go in and deal with things, it seems like you would be able to sit Tionne and Chilli down, even if it’s not at the same time, but separately. L: It would seem that way, but unfortunately it’s not. It’s a little difficult trying to reason with them because I walk in the meetings and all I want to talk about is business and it’s almost like there’s a wall between me and the other two of them – as if everything I say bounces off the wall. It never even reaches them. Nothing I say makes since to them. My views on life, they don’t agree with. They’re all problems that do not have to exist within the business aspect of TLC.

J: Do you feel that way – after what happened with you with the house burning down and they not knowing if there was going to still be a TLC – do you think they felt that their careers were put on hold because of the trouble that you had gotten in at that time? Were they supportive of you during that time? L: Yes, very supportive.

J: So when did this tension come? L: Well I say it came right before we started recording the third album. You know, the problems that we were having with Dallas. Chilli usually will take Dallas’ side opposed to the group’s side, so that caused one problem. She [Chilli] is very money hungry. She’s always looking for the discount, always cutting here and there, cutting legal bulls, having conversations with out accountant, cutting their bills. But for some reason, when it came to Dallas and him wanting to charge this $4.2 million to exclusive produce our project, she was fine with that. She came up with every reason under the sky as to why that was okay.

J: That’s her boyfriend though, right? L: That’s her boyfriend.

J: I heard she was very money conscious. L: Yes, but when it comes to Dallas, there’s no winning for us.

J: Well, now with some of the videos that were shot, did you all agree on those videos? Because they cost a lot. What was “Unpretty”, about $2 million? L: Yes it was about $2 million.

J: And “Scrubs” was about $2 million too, right? L: That was $1.5 million.

J: But they had to pay $600,000 in cancellation fees didn’t they? Lisa: Yes.

J: Girl, how are you all going to make some money back?! L: See that’s one of the dilemmas that we are faced with.

J: Are you telling me that you all are going to come out of this thing owing money again? L: Not if I have anything to for with it. As far as I’m concerned, we can this challenge and we can put out another album and we can make some more money. Or we can do nothing and will go my own way and I will really concentrate on my solo project. Everything that they have put on me, I will make that come to light.

J: Do you feel like people are picking on you? L: No. I feel like they are player hating.

J: Did you cry when you said they broke your heart? L: No, I didn’t cry until I got to the show the next day and I had to go and act friendly and act like buddies on stage. That part hurt.

J: I don’t know how you make it, girl! You go through so much and the thing about it, you don’t have a wrinkle on your face, a gray hair, nothing. It seems like you come out of this looking more beautiful. When I saw you the other night at a party, I said she looks younger than she ever did. You know you look like you’re five! L: Yeah. I’ve been blessed. My whole family has been blessed. It’s in our genetics. My mother looks younger, her father looks younger.

J: Are you living better now? I know this money situation has been crazy. I remember when you were on MTV, you were talking about how we had to do the math because you all only get seven percent. You get more than that now right? L: Right, 20 percent.

J: So you all get like $1.60 per record? L: Right. And that’s minus the $1.5 million “Scrubs” video, the $2 million “Unpretty” video and it’s also minus the advance we were given when we negotiated, which was over $10 million between the three of us. So at the end of the day unless we sell 20 million records, there’s still not a big amount of money that we incur from record sales. But you know, that’s why you do other things like sell merchandise, go on tour, do other projects, endorse projects. But if those other things aren’t going to put money in your pocket, then what are we all doing this for?

J: Weren’t you all going to do an endorsement with MAC [cosmetics]? What happened with that? L: We did an endorsement with Sephora instead. Sephora is a company that has a makeup line within it’s line. They make clothes and makeup.

J: When is that coming out? L: Next year.

J: So you all get an advance on that, right? L: Yes.

J: Have you all done any videos or commercials with Sophora? L: Not yet.

J: Don’t you all go on the Internet and talk to your fans? L: Sometimes. We do it on our individual time. I know Tionne visits the chat room often. I visit the chat room often, more often than Chilli does, but that’s a personal thing.

J: Do you want to be close to them? L: Well, I would love for us to put all of our differences aside and be the friends I know we are.

J: This is what you would say if you were in a meeting with them? Why don’t you just say it? L: Oh, we’ve said it already.

J: You have all said that you want to put your differences aside? L: Yes.

J: And you can’t?! L: Not when they’re hating me in articles.

J: Well should I call a meeting of the three of you all? L: No, I don’t think that’s necessary.

J: Something’s got to give here, LeftEye. L: Well it’s cool when everyone outside of TLC wants to get their own stuff together, but it really starts with us, you know? We’re grown. We’re women and if we can’t put our differences to the side, then it’s not going to be the end of the world.

J: Well that’s what T-Boz said, too. She said, Jamie, I’s 29 years old now, which shocked me because you all are still looking so young. How old are you now? Lisa: 28.

J: What about “The Cut? What happened with that? L: Well I had to tour this year so I couldn’t do “The Cut.” but I was hoping that I’d do “The Cut” for at least 20 years.

J: You were tearing it up! L: So, maybe next year I’ll go back.

J: Did they want to bring it back?? L: yes they did and I believe they did shoot a new season, but I’m not in the mix, so I’m not positive.

J: Well they left Edna [the creator of “The Cut”] out and that was pretty bad. I can understand that. That got me a little upset. So how’s Lorenzo [LeftEye’s boyfriend] doing? So Lorenzo doesn’t say anything about this? He just tries to keep your head together with this? L: Yep.

J: All right sweetie. You know this saddens me a lot and I really hope it gets straightened out because I was looking forward to…. You having a second leg of the tour coming up, right? L: In January. No one should hold their breath for that because none of the dates have been confirmed.

J: What do you think that you all should do right at this point? L: I think we should pack up, sell it to Pay Per View, or Showtime and let everyone in the world see the show instead of the 3,000 people that have been showing up to the 15 cities that we’re playing in – put a little bit of cash in our pockets and record our solo projects for the challenge so that all the TLC fans can have another album next year.

J: You know you all are such an important group to LaFace, I’m just surprised that LaFace doesn’t say anything. But the tour is not on LaFace, right? L: LaFace’s responsibility has to do with marketing and promoting and selling the record, Anything outside of that is solely up to TLC.

J: But if the tour goes well, it affects sales, right? L: It affects sales, but we’re at the point where we have sold the bulk of what we are going to sell. LaFace has made their profit.

J: But you all have to make like 20 million records. L: We all have to make a profit and no one should ever, no artist who’s in the industry should ever depend on record sales to make them rich. That’s not what makes you rich. It’s taking the opportunities that are a result of a successful album. It’s up to us to take those opportunities presented and benefit from them. You pick and choose and we have to deal with the consequence, so we should all try to make good choices.

J: How’s Blaque’s album doing? L: Blaque’s album is doing pretty good. Their second single was released. It was a pop song and Black radio didn’t take too lightly to it. So they went back in and they did a video for their next single called “Bring it All to Me.” So the momentum died a little bit between their first single and the single that they’re releasing now. I feel good about the marketing plan that Sony has for them and hopefully they’ll be doing well.

J: Do you travel to a city the night before and stay there? L: We leave early every night after the show, which is three nights out of the week, and go to the next city and have a day off. Then we perform the next day after that.

J: Do you all have to pay your staff for their days off? L: They’re on weekly salary so I don’t care if we do one show a week or six shows a week, they get paid what they get paid for their time.

J: Are you all doing a lot of press while you’re on the road? L: Yeah, we’ve done a good amount of press.

J: But you know what? We don’t see you everywhere. I mean like even when the album came out, I know LaFace only wanted TLC to do Vibe and there were a lot of problems trying to get you all, but you should have been on it, like Mary J. Blige on every cover in the world. What happened there? L: I don’t know. I think TLC has a bad reputation for canceling and that can affect you.

J: Yeah, it can. Okay sweetie pie. Tell everyone I said hello. Tell the girls I said hello. Maybe that’ll break the ice [laughing]. Lisa: Hey girls. I am serious about this challenge.

J: Okay, I’m going to issue it. If you think of anything else, call me. So do you all feel that you absolutely have to do $2 million videos? L: Oh, absolutely not!

J: Why are you all spending so much money on videos now? L: One thing that we are famous for doing, and I blame some of this on LaFace, is doing things at the last minute. You almost pay twice as much as it would normally cost because you’re doing a rush job and you have to pay people.

J: The videos are gorgeous, but you don’t get residuals like when you make a movie. Every time the movie plays you get some money out of it. But videos are just totally promotional and you all have to pay for half of that, right? L: Right. Well, actually we had to pay for 100 percent of it. We have to pay half of it out of record royalties and we have to pay the other half out of video royalties. Some artists don’t catch that. It’s 100 percent recoupable.

J: Well what’s video royalties? How do you get video royalties? L: Selling video tapes in the stores, like you can buy some TLC tapes if you go to Blockbusters.

J: Don’t y’all come up here broke again! When are you going to start raising a family? L: As soon as I get married.

J: Is that anytime soon? L: Don’t know.

J: Can I come? L: To the wedding/ Of course.

J: All right. I’m going to hold you to that. L: I might let you have an exclusive story to the LeftEye wedding.

J: I want to be the flower girl! You’re always doing things crazy, so let me be the flower girl! You know I love you all – all three of you. Kiss Lorenzo and everybody for me.

…… The next day, LeftEye called to make sure there aren’t any misunderstood points in the article. Here is how it went then.

Jamie: I am going to have it on the cover, “The Lisa LeftEye Challenge.” Lisa: The other thing I wanted to touch on because we talked a lot about us being broke and you not wanting us to see us back in that predicament so I didn’t want you to get anything confused. We’re not broke. It’s just that we’re not making money off touring. We have other deals and stuff going on, but it’s just nothing coming from the touring.

J: No I get that. I understood that, my darling. L: Let me see. It was two more things. We also touched on the Vibe article and I told you the reason why that would be my last interview, but what I forgot to add to that a lot of the magazines started holding us hostage and telling us that they would not do any interviews with us unless I cam and I talked. That’s how I ended up being in interviews and not saying anything. So that’s what really put me in that predicament of settling for what Tionne and Chilli wanted me to do, which was not talking, but having to be at the interview anyway because the magazines were threatening us.

J: But that didn’t happen with Entertainment Weekly, right? L: Well no because in Entertainment Weekly was when they talked. That’s why I was really, really shocked when that happened because I told you for so long I’d been muffled, but I just wanted to add that because I have been in interviews, it’s just that that’s the reason why.

J: When we did the interview in out May 99 issue, we could only get T-Boz. We couldn’t you and we couldn’t get Chilli. We just never heard anything. I couldn’t Understand that. Lisa: Really?

J: Yeah! Nobody asked you? We wanted to do an interview with all three of you. Lisa: No! You went through LaFace?

J: Yeah! L: Well no one told me that.

J: I was like, why wouldn’t Lisa want to do an interview with us? I was surprised but then maybe that was when you were being muffled and they didn’t want you to talk but it was a little strange. L: Yeah, that is strange.

J: So what was the other thing you wanted to add? L: I just wanted to add that when I did “The Cut” I was definitely player-hated on by Chilli. And my group, Blaque, was definitely player-hated on. That’s why they couldn’t go on tour with us. So that’s been a problem. It’s just weird how everybody’s doing their own solo stuff, but every time I do something it’s a major problem.

J: So how do you deal with that? Like okay, you all vote me out? L: It’s very frustrating because I’m the type of person that wants everyone to be happy. I want everybody to be able to prosper and use TLC to get them to where they want to go, use it as an outlet and do whatever they want to do.

J: So you’re happy with their successes? L: I always support them.

J: All right sweetie pie. I just want everything… you know how I’m feeling! L: I know. You want everything to be fine.

J: I want the babies to be fine. L: I think it’ll pass, Jamie, because we’ve been through stuff before. You know how sista get. I don’t see how we can be together for ten years and anything can come between us. This is a little major, but ultimately I do believe that it will pass.

J: I think so, too. You’re not rapping like you used to rap with you little voice. L: No. I’ve outgrown that voice and it’s gotten on my nerves. But you know another thing is when I changed my diet, my voice changed. I stopped eating meat, sugar, dairy, alcohol and soda. I still eat seafood, but yeah, I’m a vegetarian."

Summary

What was the result? The day this issued, December 1st, 1999, Chilli ended up speaking with MTV on behalf of T-Boz and herself, turning down the challenge. She stated her and T-Boz only said those things out of anger, and that the interviewer caught them on a bad day, Chilli did start working on a solo album that next year, Left Eye said to LSQ Podcast back in 2000 that this was also a business move to help get the girls from under LaFace/Arista Records clutches since they only had 3 albums left under their contract, and to make one of the most monumental moments in music history! One of the biggest girl groups of all time (who's drama spilled in the public) finding a way to benefit from it at the height of their career by dropping 3 individual solo albums in one as their 4th project for $30, and the record label to just pay the member with the highest charting single as the project would only spawn 3 singles, 1 by each girl, as they gracefully leave the record label with possibly their HIGHEST selling, and charting, album/solo albums to possibly moving on to a record label that will give each girl the treatment they deserved, as a group, would have been something the public would NOT been able to take their eyes from! Each, and every move would have been watched from before, during, and especially after (like with Fifth Harmony making solo albums after their third album. A pattern seemed to have started since The Spice Girls made solo albums after their 3rd album, too. Destiny's Child did this as well during that same time frame after 'Survivor'). Left Eye felt it was a situation they all could have won from since they bashed her, and she responded (never bashing them previously), and hoped they'd see it from her perspective since they wanted to get through the contract as well. But since the girls took it personal, more worried about what happens if who won, it never happened. Left Eye always felt they couldn't handle the kind of pressure she gets, and this was proof.

(TLC, "Dear Lie" music video shoot, November 1999)

(TLC, '3D' studio sessions, November 2001)