Blender Magazine (2001)

(Photographed by Jack Chuck)

Blender Magazine, August/September 2001 Issue

Who Does Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes Think She Is? She's the 30-year-old “Crazy” one from Atlanta’s TLC, who famously burned down her boyfriend’s mansion in 1994, refuses to eat carrots on principle and is very, very “good with wood.” That may be, but can she unravel the Gordian knot that is the question…

By Rob Tannenbaum

What’s that you sketched for Blender?

It’s a 12-pointed star—a stilated dodecahedron. Do meaning two, deca meaning 10. Two and 10 is 12, so it’s a 12-pointed star. My solo album is released on August 16, 2001, the day a new star will be born, which is me, a supernova. It’s a rare star, one that increases in brightness up to a billion times. I’m going to shine brighter than ever.

Thanks for the science lesson. If you had absolute power in this country for an hour, what would you change?

Oh, my goodness, I’d change our diets. The majority of the stuff we eat is either a hybrid, a cross-breed or chemically sprayed. Those things cause your food to have an incomplete molecular structure. And when you eat these foods, you develop diseases and mucus. If we could change our diets, we’d live longer, be more healthy, wouldn’t be fat and would think clearer. I don’t eat sugar, dairy products, meat or sodas. I don’t eat fruits or vegetables that are hybrids, like lemons and carrots. That’s about it.

I bet you’re not a big fan of the Big Mac.

I do eat McDonald’s French fries. But I shouldn’t.

What’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made?

Hmm. Wow. Let me see. [Very long pause] I’m trying to think of an incident…

What do you wish you could get away with?

Walking the streets butt-naked. There are places I do that, but not in the city. It’s usually in the tropical rain forest in Honduras, where there aren’t too many people around.

What do you do when you’re angry or upset?

Normally, these days I take a deep breath and move on. I used to hold it in, and hold it in, and hold it in, and then bust. Like a bomb, ha ha.

Describe the worst haircut you’ve ever had.

It was ’87. I was 16, and I had the left side of my head shaved completely, and zig-zags cut into the shaved area. The rest of my hair was curled in a flip. My mom was pretty taken—not in a good way, though.

Give us a tour of your tattoos and your scars.

Cool. This tattoo [left shoulder], the eagle symbolizes freedom, the knife symbolizes not freedom, ’cause that’s how I was feeling at the time, and the 80 is the number that belongs to my boyfriend, Andre Rison [football star, owner of the aforementioned mansion]. PARRON [right shoulder] is my stepbrother, who died in a Jet Ski accident. This scar [left forearm] says LOVE, but then I had a really bad day and I wrote HATE on it with a Lady Bic razor. It didn’t hurt. I was feeling really crummy at the time, and wanted a lot of attention, ha ha.

Can you change a car tire?

Yeah, of course. I can splice wires, do a little construction. I’m good with wood.

What habit do you have that people find annoying?

Oh, gosh. Pressing the oil out of my face. I don’t understand what the oil’s there for—why does it have to be clumped up? I’ll stay in the mirror for hours, and when I get done, my face is always real red and puffy. If I’m gone for 20 minutes or more, people know I’m in the bathroom. They’ll yell up the steps: “Get outta the bathroom! Get outta your face!” I’m known for that.

If you were a man, who would you want to be?

Tupac. He’s everything, plus some. And the “plus some” is what I would do away with if I were him—then maybe he would still be here today.