When Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes, and Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas joined forces as TLC, the landscape of girl groups changed forever.
During their exhilarating run, TLC smashed records, set new style trends, and shined a light on important issues like HIV/AIDS and body image. Their unique sound and willingness to take risks helped solidify their status as one of the best-selling female groups of all time. And now, their legacy is immortalized on film.
TLC Forever, a new documentary premiering on A&E/Lifetime on June 3, dives into the drastic highs and lows of the trio's 30-year career. Amid their many incredible achievements, there was also a lot of struggle, including bankruptcy, headline-making brawls, and tragedy. As Watkins jokingly declared at the 1996 GRAMMYs, "TLC will leave this business being remembered for a lot of things."
The nearly 120-minute film follows the iconic musical trio from their first meeting to Lopes' untimely death in 2002, and follows Watkins and Thomas as they prepare to perform at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. It will be particularly special to fans, as the doc sees Watkins and Thomas watch the rare footage with longtime manager Bill Diggins in real time.
Whether you're familiar with TLC's story or are eager to learn more, TLC Forever is worth the watch. Below, take a look at five key takeaways from the documentary.
Left-Eye's Infamous Mansion Torching Was Misconstrued By The Media
In the spring of 1994 — a mere five months before TLC's best-selling CrazySexyCool dropped — Lopes sought revenge on her then-boyfriend, former Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison. After she allegedly caught him cheating, Lopes set a pair of his sneakers on fire in a bathtub in his two-story mansion, which subsequently spread to the rest of the home.
Charged with felony arson, placed on a five-year probation, and sentenced to a $10,000 fine, the then 23-year-old rapper was never quite able to shake her "crazy" reputation brought on by the incident. However, TLC Forever uncovers details that give her actions more context.
In the doc, Thomas describes Lopes and Rison's relationship as "toxic," before adding that "it was always something going on." Months after they started dating, Lopes and Rison got into a heated argument in a grocery parking lot, where Rison allegedly assaulted her and fired a warning shot to stop bystanders from getting involved.
"I felt so bad for her, because when I walked in the room, I just remember the look on her face," Watkins says in the film, referring to the house fire. "Her nails were popped off, she was scratched up, bruised up and bleeding, and the whole world was looking at her like, 'What did you do?' And everybody didn't respond like they should've."
As many fans know, Lopes had protested CrazySexyCool's lead single "Creep," due to its lyrics promoting infidelity (especially amid the ongoing AIDS epidemic, which claimed nearly 42,000 lives in the U.S. alone that same year). Plus, the chart-topper went against what TLC had been known for: wearing condoms on baggy clothes as a way of advocating for safe sex.
Though the song was actually inspired by Watkins' own relationship woes, Lopes feared that Rison would think she was cheating on him, possibly triggering more alleged abuse within their tumultuous relationship. So, for the remix, she wrote a verse warning listeners of the consequences of creeping: "Creepin' may cause hysterical behavior in the mind/ Put your life into a bind and in time/ Make you victim to a passionate crime," she raps.
Chilli Re-Evaluated Her Relationship With Dallas Austin After Becoming A Mom
Early in Thomas' longtime romance with LaFace producer Dallas Austin, she became pregnant ahead of the trio's debut album, Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip, which jeopardized her future with the group. Not receiving much support from Austin and fearing then-manager Perri "Pebbles" Reid would find out, Thomas reluctantly had an abortion at the age of 20, calling it a "horrible experience" in the documentary.
"After that, I probably experienced some kind of breakdown. I couldn't forgive myself," she says. "I just felt this tremendous guilt for what I had done, and that guilt not being properly dealt with is what made me latch on more to Dallas."
In 1997, Thomas and Austin had a son named Tron, which acted in many ways as closure for the singer. "Once I had Tron, it really put the relationship I had with Dallas into perspective. It was clear that wasn't a functioning, healthy, loving relationship," she admits. They went their separate ways a couple years later, still working together creatively and co-parenting their son, who is now 26.
Left-Eye's Absence On FanMail Was Partly Due To Her Beginning A Spiritual Journey
Despite CrazySexyCool selling 15 million copies worldwide, spawning two No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning two GRAMMYs, TLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1995 before going on a five-year hiatus that was prolonged by tension within the group. In the months leading up to TLC's third studio effort, FanMail — whose title was coined by Lopes and dedicated to the fans — Lopes expressed her dissatisfaction with the project after a handful of her songs were rejected by Dallas Austin.
"I cannot stand 100 percent behind this TLC project and the music that is supposed to represent me," Lopes famously said in a 1999 interview with Vibe, which fueled rumors of a breakup. "This will be my last interview until I can speak freely about the truth and present myself on my solo project."
Around the same time, Lopes challenged Watkins and Thomas to record solo albums and offered a $1.5 million prize for whichever member sold the most copies. Lopes' raps can only be heard on three of FanMail's 17 tracks — and while a lot of her absence was certainly due to internal conflict, Watkins and Thomas confirmed that where Lopes was creatively "just didn't match" with what Austin was producing. At the time of Lopes' passing, she was on a 30-day spiritual retreat in Honduras, parts of which were recorded and released as 2007's posthumous documentary The Last Days of Left Eye.
T-Boz Struggled With Depression After Brain Tumor Diagnosis
In 2006, Watkins privately battled an acoustic neuroma, a potentially fatal brain tumor that sat on her facial, hearing and balance nerves. The then 36-year-old underwent surgery to remove the tumor, a risk exacerbated by her ongoing complications from sickle cell anemia since childhood.
"[The doctor] said in case something goes wrong and I can't save either your hearing or your face or your balance, give me the order that you want to save yourself," she said in the doc. "This industry is about your face, your voice, your dancing — that's my whole job. So, they took my balance, I saved my face for the most part, [and] I only lost three percent [of my hearing] at the time."
Watkins added that she felt depressed and unattractive for many years after the surgery, until her mother changed her perspective. "I remember looking in the mirror one day and I started crying, and my mom said, 'No.' She said, 'Look, this is just your journey back to normal. This is not how you're gonna stay, this is not how you're gonna be. This is only your journey back to how you started,'" she recalled. "I said, 'Yeah, okay, if I look at it that way, then all I gotta do is survive this and get through it and I can be cool. And then the fight kicks in that I'm living, I'm going to survive this, I'm going to beat this."
Now 53, Watkins is still going strong. However, the film gives viewers a deeper look into just how much preparation is required for her to be able to perform without compromising her health. Before and after hitting the stage, Watkins must receive enough fluids and oxygen to keep inflammation at a minimum.
T-Boz & Chilli Were Faced With An Ultimatum Right After Left-Eye's Death
Watkins and Thomas discuss the immense amount of pressure they faced from their label to move forward without Lopes, who tragically passed away at 30 years old in a car accident during her Honduras trip. "After Lisa passed, the record company said they were gonna put out a greatest hits [album] if we didn't finish [3D], so we kinda felt forced to go back into the studio," Watkins said in TLC Forever. "We were given an ultimatum." Thomas added, "We had tunnel vision, let's just finish it."
Despite going platinum, 3D was seen as a commercial failure by TLC's standards, selling fewer than 700,000 copies and its lead single, "Girl Talk," peaking at No. 28 on the Hot 100. Following their first live performance without Lopes at Z100's annual Zootopia concert in 2003, the music industry seemingly wrote them off — but Thomas said she never felt it was truly over. It wasn't until their VH1 Super Bowl Blitz concert in 2014 that promoters started reaching out, which eventually led to the biggest performance of their extraordinary career: taking the stage at Glastonbury last year.
"The greatest reward is when you don't have the No. 1 song anymore and you're able to sell out your tours," Thomas says as the film wraps. "That means you have a great body of work that can stand the test of time, and time has told us that we did good. We did alright."