XXL Magazine Interviews Left Eye While in the Studio with Blaque, Recording "I Do" (1997)

Tough Love

XXL, Issue #2

There is a photo, circa 1971, of Lisa Nicole Lopes, her mother Wanda and her father Ronald. It's a Polaroid shot, the kind taken in almost every black household of that era. Her smiling, handsome father holds baby Lisa in his arms, while her mother stands proudly beside them. A tuft of hair on Lisa's head is secured by a red bow, and even then her eyes dominate her face. Some people say the future can be divined from a single childhood photograph. But this photo foretells none of the problems that would come. Twenty-six years later, that baby is the "L" in TLC, one of the most successful girl groups of all time. Her mother is an interior decorator and survivor of an abusive marriage. Her father is dead. The ghosts of the past are reflected in Lisa's eyes as she goes about the often painful process of adulthood. Three years ago, a fire she started would make her infamous, right before TLC made a mockery of the sophomore jinx. CrazySexyCool sold five million albums and won four MTV Video awards. Huddled underneath a flowered blanket in an Atlanta recording studio, Lisa looks like a child unexpectedly thrust into womanhood. She's wearing a DKNY white mesh tank top, a Nike sports bra and white cut-off sweatpants. On her head are two ponytails, secured with red ponytail holders an 8-year old might wear. Her only jewelry is a pair of diamond-stud earrings. She still feels the effects of last night's nightclubbing. Jena Si Qua, a group signed to her Left Eye Productions, was performing. Despite leaving the club well after 4 am, she had had to get up early to supervise auditions for a male singing group. Tonight, she's observing a studio session for her teenage trio, Blaque, who're working on a Motown-like song called "I Do."

Blaque and Silhouette, a female duo on the verge of signing with her have been enjoying a weekend slumber party at Lisa's home. They call Lisa "Mommy," as TLC once called their mentor, Pebbles, years before.

In 1991, Ooooooohhh...On The TLC Tip ushered in a new musical era of female independence and forthright sexuality. Way before Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown gave us the graphic details of their love lives, TLC's baby-faced members sang about women openly asking for sex. Their first hit, "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg," featured the memorable line, "Two inches or a yard, rock hard or if it's saggin'," leaving no doubt about what they were begging for. Lisa, given the moniker "Left Eye" because an ex once told her he found that particular eye attractive, emerged as the groups wild child, always taking things to the limits and beyond. She seemed the most boisterous on stage and in videos, wearing huge, colorful hats and making silly faces. With CrazySexyCool three years later, Lisa was clearly resenting the crazy side of the trio. Success validated her childhood aspirations, making her famous the way she'd always wanted, but trouble brewed even then. On the day in 1991 when she signed the contracts that would make TLC a reality, she also experienced the first of a series of losses.

(Second Nature)

"My father died the same day Pebbles said she was going to sign us," she says. "And I got in the car, and for a whole hour, I was just dreaming about getting back with my father and trying to make things right. Then my mother called me that evening and told me my father had been killed. It was the best day of my life, but it turned into the worst evening of my life."

Lisa would seem to have it all. She's just moved into a new, four-bedroom home in a neighborhood that is literally springing up around her. Lisa's next door neighbor is a pile of Georgia red clay, a plot of land she wants to buy to ensure her privacy. Kids play in backyards, visible from the deck of Lisa's kitchen. Her mother lovingly decorated the house, furnishing it with pretty, feminine items. Lisa's bedroom looks like a room for a princess, with a zebra-striped ottoman and soft pillows for friends to lounge on. It's a far cry from the small converted-garage apartment that Lisa, her brother Ronald Jr., now 22, and sister Raina, 23, grew up in.

Lisa's father, Ronald, was an Army staff sergeant and recruiter who played in the Army band. He met Wanda Hewlett in Philadelphia when the two were in High School. They married, and had Lisa in 1971. Lisa was a bright child who walked at seven months and could tap out movie themes by ear on a piano at age four. But Ronald was abusive, beating Wanda on numerous occasions, as the family moved from Philly to Kansas to Panama to New Jersey. A decade of punishment later, Lisa's mother moved her family to Florida in the middle of the night, later divorcing Lisa's father. But for a year, Ronald didn't even know where they were. They reconciled and remarried when Wanda returned to Philadelphia a few years later. In the three years they stayed together, things got worse. "They got back together for the kids' sake," Lisa says with some bitterness. "Yeah, right. I was doing pretty good. I was smart when I was growing up, straight A's and all that. But then my home life distracted me."

Wanda Lopes, now a very youthful 46, moved to Atlanta four years ago and started an interior design business that is now thriving. She'd always sewed, making her children's clothes and creatively decorating their homes, but Lisa encouraged her to start her own business. While she's reluctant to discredit Lisa's father now, Wanda is clearly still angry at the way his problems affected her family.

"I wanted the marriage to work," she says. "Women in general always want the marriage to work, and that was my goal." Herself the product of a broken home, Wanda was determined to raise her children in a two-parent home. But alcohol abuse was at the root of her husband's problems, just as it would eventually become a factor in Lisa's life. "I regret getting married again," Wanda says now. "Before we got married again, Lisa was fine. All the kids were doing well in school, just being away from their father. Lisa, being the oldest, was picked on the most and played tug-of-war with. I'm still finding out things that her father did. He was destroying lives."

Lisa's relationship with her father was complicated. She'll readily admit he was abusive. But she will also say that her mother got him dishonorably discharged from the Army after 13 years by calling the military police on him numerous times. When she talks about how strict her father was, she acts out how he had his children line up military fashion, while he marched back and forth in front of them, yelling like a drill sergeant -- for an offense as minor as leaving a pen on the floor. "It was almost like he would just wait for me to do something so he could put me on punishment." Lisa says. "And I mean no radio, no TV, no telephone, no front porch, no going in the backyard, no leaving for school before a certain time, no extracurricular activities at school, no nothing. And that lasted for years." Although she heard her parents battling as a child, she never saw it until she was 16. That's when Ronald beat and cursed her mother while the children cowered in a corner. When he was done, he went to bed with a knife clutched to his chest. Lisa and her brother and her sister stayed still and awake until daylight, terrified that he would kill them.

Lisa's own relationships have often included abuse. The boyfriend that helped her get to Atlanta was abusive, as was a guy she dated while still in Philadelphia. But it would be her relationship with All-Pro football receiver Andre Rison, 30, now with the Kansas City Chiefs, that would uncannily replicate her parent's relationship. Lisa and Andre met at an Atlanta night club in 1992, when he was playing for the Atlanta Falcons. Lisa was uninterested at first, but Andre was persistent. After an early date at his house, she never went home. Trouble became apparent in September 1993, when the two were arrested outside and Atlanta nightclub. Witnesses said Andre was beating her, and then discharged a handgun when people came to her aid. The charges were dropped. A few weeks later, Lisa was arrested at the Georgia Dome after an altercation with the police when she tried to leave with a drink. Although friends and family were concerned, they elected to leave Lisa and Andre alone to work out their problems.

Lisa sits cross-legged on the floor of her cousin's bedroom. It's late afternoon, and the relentless afternoon sun is shining brightly through the windows. She's wearing a tight striped tank top and cut-off denim shorts. Her feet are bare, toenails painted bright red. A tattoo of musical notes and a half moon is inked on her instep. On her right bicep, a cross impales a blue heart, while a falcon flies through a large "80" on her left. It was Andre's number when he played for the Falcons. Even though she and Andre have been broken up for the past six months, there is still pain in her eyes when she talks about him. "I could never wear this stuff around Andre's friends," She says, indicating her outfit, which is more practical than sexy on an scorching Atlanta fall day. "Never wear anything too revealing, nothing tight. If I'm barefoot when his friends are over, put my socks on. No one can see my feet. If I go out of town on TLC business, when I get back, it's 'Who was I fucking', stuff like that. So when I was in Atlanta, I never went out. But after two years, he started getting carried away, spending the night out, then coming back and acting like nothing happened." Anger and resentment prevailed in their home. Five months before the infamous fire, Lisa says she caught Andre in bed with another woman at the house. While it's unclear whether or not the couple was estranged at the time, Lisa became enraged when Andre tried to remove her from the house in front of the woman. After the couple left, Lisa set all the teddy bears she'd bought Andre on fire. He kept the bears around the master bedroom bathtub, so she threw them in it, and torched them. Two weeks later, Lisa woke up in the house and saw Andre's friends standing in the kitchen, bags packed. Andre was going on an out-of-town trip, something he hadn't told her. When he returned the next day, Lisa had covered his bedroom walls from the ceiling to the floor with messages in permanent magic marker. "I didn't have to say two words," Lisa says. "All he had to do was walk in his bedroom, and he could see what was on my mind. I would do shit like that." Lisa moved to the apartment over the garage, quietly seething, watching Andre come and go. A combination of stubbornness and unhealthy love held her there. Even she realizes now that her relationship with Andre was just like her parents', including her trouble with Andre's family. They, perhaps not unreasonably, hate her. Both she and her mother believe that his family interfered in the relationship. "My mother was over here: 'It's never going to work.' His mother was over there: 'I don't like her for you.' And what that did was push us closer together. Instead of just saying, 'I don't care what nobody says, I'm leaving him because we can't get along.' I would think, 'Fuck everybody else. I'm gonna show everybody that we're going to work our stuff out. It's not going to be like my mother and father.' "

On June 9, 1994, Lisa went out with her uncle, sister, and some friends. After two weeks of being in the garage apartment, watching Andre with out speaking or making contact with him, she decided to make a point. "Back then, I didn't wear dresses in public. I mean, because he didn't want any guys to see me like he sees me in the bedroom or anything like that. I bought a dress, I got my nails done, I got my hair done. Me and some girls went out, and we didn't even go anywhere. It was Wednesday, and we missed all the clubs. The whole point was to come home late, dressed, with girlfriends. And when I got home, he wasn't even home yet. But two seconds later he pulled in the driveway. He saw me in the dress, out drunk, and his brothers got out the car, saying smart stuff." Lisa followed him into the house, screaming and crying. She slapped him. Andre dragged her into their bedroom and they started fighting. "He threw me on the bed, and said, 'You hoe, what the fuck do you have on?' He ripped off my dress and we were fighting. Next thing, when I looked in the mirror, my face was messed up, my fingers were bleeding, I was snapping. I don't know where Andre was, but I know I came downstairs to kill him after I saw my face."

Though Lisa's uncle tried to intervene, Andre's brothers physically stopped him. Lisa, in something like a trance, set the fire in the same bathtub she'd used to burn the teddy bears. But this time, she lit up piles of new sneakers Andre bought. Unbeknownst to her at the time, the bathtub Andre had installed after the first fire was plastic instead of marble. The fire blazed out of control. Lisa denies that theirs was an abusive relationship, characterizing their accidents as "fights." At barely 5'1" and 100 pounds, however, it's hard to see how a physical confrontation with a 6', 190 pound athlete could be considered a fair fight.

She dismisses her admitted problems with drinking as a "bad habit." But she began to deal with her habit after the fire, when she was admitted to the substance abuse treatment center, Charter Peachford, on the advice of her lawyer. Lisa initially resisted. "I kept saying no' cause I got fans, I got TLC, we have an image. 'You're not sendin' me there like I'm some crazy drunk bitch who got drunk one night and decided to burn Andre's house up,' I said. 'Send me to an abuse center or something. But you can't make this look like it's all my fault.' " Lisa says Andre was her biggest supporter during that time, visiting her every day, desperately trying to find her after the fire to bail her out of jail, $20,000 cash in his pocket. "He was just sorry, and I was just sorry. We were both sorry in a fucked up position." Lisa's father had introduced her to drinking at age 15, even taking her to bars with him.

"I started to see that everyone is a product of their environment. If it's bad, then you have to decide whether you want to break the cycle or not. I grew up in a dysfunctional home. Most people do. And I really can't blame my parents because they [did to]. So before I turn around and say why did my dad let me drink, I just stop and think, well, I wonder what he went through while he was growing up? What I'm going to have to do before I have a child is break this cycle. 'Cause if I had brought a child into this world while me and Andre was burning up cribs and doing all this crazy shit, they would have grown up fucked up and it just would have continued."

Lisa carries a permanent scar from her relationship with Andre. On her left arm, there are 4 raised letters. They spell out the word H-A-T-E. When asked about them, Lisa shrugs. "War wounds," she says. Later, she will admit she cut them into her arm with a razor, over similar lettering that once said "I love Dre." Andre found her bleeding and bandaged the wound. When asked if it hurt, she says starkly, "No. It was my heart that was hurting." The couple would stay together for three more years, living together in two different cities, though Lisa says the violence in their relationship abated. Today, they remain friends. But she still cries sometimes for no reason, especially while driving.

(left to right: Sky Keeton, Tangi Forman, Trena, Left Eye, Brandi from Blaque, and more at the top right)

Today is a good day, despite the intrusive presence of an interviewer. Earlier, her kitchen bustled with activity as group members from Blaque and Silhouette woke up, singing verses from popular R&B songs as they prepared sugary cereal for breakfast. Tangi Foreman, 22, Lisa's cousin, lives there, while Trena Smith, 23, her personal assistant, comes in and out. Sky, a charismatic, 21-year old male singer from Laurel, Mississippi (which he pronounces La-uhl) is there, too. He has an obvious crush on Lisa, but her interest in him seems purely professional.

"Every man around Lisa falls in love with her," says someone close to her. Lisa says there are several men around that want to date her, including one who's piled her with gifts and money. But she's more interested in getting her business together. Despite the "crazy bitch" tag that's dogged her since the fire, Lisa's surprisingly domestic, cooking up a mean seafood salad and some chicken and rice for dinner.

That things are peaceful these days takes some effort. Lisa's newest tattoo, the cross on her bicep with the name above it, is in the memory of her 18-year old stepbrother Parron, who drowned in a jet skiing accident at a party she threw this summer. Two weeks from now, Lisa, Tangi, Trena, and another friend will travel to Philadelphia for a memorial for Tangi's infant son, Jose, who died three years ago. Tangi was waiting for Lisa in a car when she accidentally knocked the car out of gear, and it rolled down a hill. Though she jumped out of the car, she and her son hit the ground. The child died hours later at the hospital.

Lisa's ability to deal with adversity helped her survive Gateway, the innocuously named "Diversion Center" where she spent three months after pleading guilty to one account of Arson. Her sentence, which could have been up to 20 years, was reduced once her attorney showed the judge bruises on her face, side, back, and arm. Her uncle also testified that he saw part of the fight that preceded the fire. Lisa paid a $10,000 fine and was sentenced to five years probation, which still requires her to obtain a travel permit every time she leaves Georgia. She also paid $750,000 to Lloyd's of London, the insurers to Andre's house.

At first she was afraid of the response her celebrity might bring while she was in jail. "One week, they see me in a video, the next I'm naked in the jail with some bitch spraying my pussy," Lisa laughs, describing her introduction to the strip and spray routine most prisoners are familiar with. Her first day in jail, she walked in, face set, prepared for anything but the applause that greeted her.

(Trena, Left Eye, and Andre at Andre's Birthday Party in 1997)

She and Trena met at Gateway. Trena is a tall, lean woman with a short, braided bob; she favors the nylon sweat suits that Lisa usually wears. While she's polite and personable, she has a certain edgy energy that hints at her troubled past. When Trena met Lisa, she was already a TLC fan who'd grown up in Atlanta's rough Grady Projects. She had a young daughter, Snow, but her life was on a downward spiral. They were randomly assigned roommates who bonded over spades and started looking out for each other. "If she wasn't there, I wouldn't talk to nobody," Trena says. "I had a bad temper, so I just kept quiet. I would look out for her and make sure she got up on time. She had a lateness problem. We kept each other on our p's and q's." Lisa, Tangi, Trena, and their friend Tabeth, 29, who grew up with Andre, are a tight quartet. Tangi is also an artist, signed to Left Eye Productions, and Tabeth works with Lisa's company. All are wounded in some way, but have each other for support through boyfriends, family problems, and everyday drama. They are particularly protective of Lisa; they say she is generous to a fault.

"We understand each other," says Trena. "We've been through some of the same things at different times. We can sit down and talk about our problems. God put us together for a reason. We were headed for trouble, but we drifted off that road."

Lisa's diminutive size and seeming vulnerability disguise an interior much tougher than most people think. It was Lisa who engineered TLC's "visit" to Arista head Clive Davis' office when the group was in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings and contract negotiations. The suit was settled and their deal with LaFace upgraded, though the group still hasn't seen any royalties from CrazySexyCool. And it is Lisa who's been the most vocal member in TLC's recent dispute with longtime producer Dallas Austin, who Lisa says wanted and exorbitant $175,000 a track to do their songs for the upcoming third album. Despite the awkwardness of her position -- group member Chilli recently had a son with Dallas -- it seems that Lisa has prevailed. As TLC returns to the studio to work on the new album, they will not be working with Dallas this time.

Lisa takes business very seriously and since her breakup with Andre, she's finally been able to develop Left Eye Productions. She recently signed a deal which allows her to bring acts to Sony labels. It's not a big-money deal, though Sony covers some of her overhead cost. But it's a triumph, nonetheless. "My love is music," Lisa says. "More than I would like to be on stage , I would love to be responsible for the music that's on the radio. You know, the songs people love, I would like to have something to do with that."

When Lisa finishes talking, she goes to pick Blaque up from the studio. It's about 3 a.m., and Lisa's driving down a pitch black Atlanta highway, with three sleepy, giggling teenagers in the back seat of her white Range Rover, a present from Andre. She looks for all the world like a soccer mom, bringing her children home after a road trip. Tupac's "Me Against the World" is playing softly in the car. Even with two years of probation still hanging over her head, Lisa has plenty to look forward to and is cautiously optimistic about the future. As the girls chatter, she makes a wrong turn and for a minute, is lost. But Lisa finds her way again, steering the big car back in the right direction, making her way through the darkness.