As one of the top rewards for the Kickstarter that funded TLC’s fifth and final album, donors who pledged $5,000 or more were gifted a slumber party at the personal residences of T-Boz or Chilli. “We’ll put on our jammies,” read the description, “order some late night snacks, and have some #TLCPillowTalk. Mom and Dad won’t be there, so there’s no need to keep the volume down.”
Such an intimate prize—and its dishy, familial language—encapsulates the ethos guiding TLC since their first album, Ooooooohhh… on the TLC Tip, in 1992. In their music as well as their personas, they have cultivated their regular-girlness as an asset while retaining an aura of cool, a feat few if any pop stars have achieved with such massive success. (Katy Perry, who procured one of those T-Boz slumber parties, may have come close at an earlier point in her career.)
As feminist heroes, even TLC’s biggest hits have been a beacon for multiple generations of women and girls, delving into such topics as self-esteem (“Unpretty”), and not settling (“No Scrubs”), as well as social issues like AIDS awareness and the cycle of poverty and drug dealing (“Waterfalls”). TLC were practicing devoted “fan engagement” (and defining it) near-decades before the constant cheesing of social media, and so it’s perhaps unsurprising that they would would freely offer up their own homes to fans, as well as set Kickstarter records for how quickly those fans raised and surpassed the $150,000 goal.
The resulting album, TLC, is a love letter to them. While not as explicitly directed as 1999’s Fanmail, it both hits on every style in TLC’s vast range and properly dignifies their storied career, incorporating songs that acknowledge their impact without waxing nostalgic (even if the boppy lead single was titled “Way Back”). After an intro jam declaring they need “No Introduction” while simultaneously introducing them in a heavy sub-bass clatter that seems tailor-made for opening arena concerts, Chilli and T-Boz begin with a pointed set of barbecue jams. The breezy “Way Back” calls to mind Alexander O’Neal and Cherrelle’s R&B classic “Saturday Love,” and paired back-to-back with the Boney M-sampling disco rave-up “It’s Sunny,” TLC gives a nod to its influences, a statement that even icons have icons. As album openers, the throwback qualities of these tracks are significant on a recording-career-ending album, reverent goodbyes that also recognize the wide age range of their devoted listenership. And the unique symbiosis of the duo’s voices are as impeccable as ever, T-Boz’s smoky alto gliding beneath Chilli’s chirpy one. That sound is a symbol of round-the-way-girlhood so embedded into the cultural fabric that it’s hard to know when it ever wasn’t, and strange to think these are the last iterations of it.
Its finality certainly weighs on the album, as Chilli and T-Boz have crafted a conscious epilogue to their albums career (they say they will still perform together). While overall TLC doesn’t burn with the glossy sheen they created with longtime collaborating producer Dallas Austin, who’s notably absent here (he and Chilli have a son together), perhaps it doesn’t need to. The warmest tracks are centered on acoustic guitar or piano, letting the burning vocal take the lead—particularly in the sensual “Start a Fire,” a midnight bedroom track as satiny as the pajamas they donned in the “Waterfalls” video, and on the touching album standout “American Gold.” The latter is the song most obviously written about Left Eye, who was the eminently unique “crazy” in their CrazySexyCool trio before her death in a car crash in 2002. “I lost some friends, some friends I didn’t want to,” Chilli and T-Boz duet sublimely. But “American Gold” also serves as an antiwar song and a chance for spiritual uplift. “Feelin’ undefeated/From the ones who try to have power over you,” the duo intones. “Don’t let ’em control you.”
That message of self-motivation and self-sufficiency is central to any TLC album, and here T-Boz and Chilli include it on “Perfect Girls,” a rebuttal to the distorted worldview transmitted to women and girls via Instagram and the fashion world. It’s a gentle track, their voices deliberately soft like an arm around the shoulder, as they remind us that “Perfect girls ain’t real/They live a lie but it’s always on your mind/’Cause you’re online all the time/Know that perfect girls ain’t real… Gotta learn to love yourself.” At first glance, it might seem obvious, but with piano trills and a synth counter-rhythm the message truly hits in the heart and gut, a 2017 companion piece to “Unpretty.” TLC, again, has always been mindful of its audience, particularly targeting underrepresented black girls and other girls of color who lack representation in the media and have a comparative dearth of positive reinforcement about their physical beauty (and the beauty of their existences).
With the nuances of that track in particular, it’s tough to let TLC go, their position as role models so crucial to a pop/R&B landscape that needs them. And yet, TLC's letting-go is bittersweet and good, a sometimes somber, sometimes playful requiem for their time together (and with us). The duo’s official wave goodbye comes in the form of “Joy Ride,” ostensibly the album closer, and a cheerful, lightly funky appreciation of their career. Its first words are “thank you” and it sounds like a parade, a brass section fêteing T-Boz and Chilli’s gossamer harmonies. Their positivity never flags, and the melody is as infectious as any song they’ve written through the years; the Kickstarter funding of the album is less an indictment of the lack of institutional support from the music industry and more of a reminder that they’ve always had a special relationship with their fans. As they remind us: “I ain’t never left you, I accept you, I respect you.” TLC, an indelible part of pop history, will never be gone.
