60 Songs That Explain the '90s - TLC—“No Scrubs”

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Rob explores TLC’s blockbuster R&B hit “No Scrubs” by discussing the iconic girl group’s underappreciated impact on culture, the unjust media coverage of female artists, and their unique place in history as champions of Black women in America. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Danyel Smith Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-F-M-U-S-I-S-I-C-A-N-D-T-A-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. It's a shame that there. weren't more Supremes songs about how trash men are often sometimes some men all of the time

all men some of the time objectively trash myself included probably sometimes the superms have been on my mind here in February 2021 founding member Mary Wilson just passed away at 76 years old and it's objectively trashed even imply that the superiors Supremes needed improving. They're the apex of Motown, possibly the apex of the 60s, probably the apex of girl groups of any era. But I do find myself drawn to the relatively rare Supreme song where they get the pleasure of getting a little pissed at a crap dude in their midst who can't spatially expand their horizons. You keep me hanging on as a post-break up song. It comes from a place of heartbreak of yearning. I love you too much. to be around you, you dipshit. But to me, there's a whole universe in the way Diana Ross sings the words, Get Out My Life, an alternate universe with an alternate 24-songs Supreme's greatest hits compilation of them just clowning various doofy gentlemen into the core of the earth.

Which means more breakup songs, yes, definitely. But I also want to hear the Supremes clown strangers, cat callers, oglers, hapless, cheapscape suitors. I want to let the seigneuritas step on some filas. I want them to lay waste to a few scrubs. Thankfully, TLC did it for them. TLC did it for all of us. If you live at home with your mama, oh, yes, son, I'm talking to you.

One of the great bridges of the 21st century right here, my name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s. It's time to deal with TLC's no scrubs. It's time for no scrubs to deal with us. Fellas, you're so vain. You probably think this song's not about you. They're talking to you.

They're talking to you. Atlanta's own TLC. course, are another great candidate for the best girl group of all time. If you go by pure chart success, by sales, and arguably they're the biggest. By 1999, Tian Tebas Watkins, Lisa Lefti-Lopez, and Rosanda Chili Thomas are famous, MTV Famous, Grammy Famous, Billboard Chart Famous, and, mostly thanks to Lisa, tabloid famous. Their previous album, 1994's Crazy Sexy Cool has at this point been certified diamond, more than 10 million copies sold in America. First female group in history to do so. And yet, and yet, still, according to No Scrubs, TLC are constantly badgered by crap dudes,

leaning out the shotgun windows of their buddies mid-priced SUVs. They are still bombarded by amorous mediocrity. It's an outrage. Can't detect acquisition from your friend's expedition. In other words, get out my life. Why don't you, babe? No Scrubs was the first single off TLC's third album, 1999's Fan Mail, which debuted at number one in the Billboard album chart and sold six million copies in America alone. No Scrubs was the number one song in America for seven weeks, though by volume, by sales, it's still not quite TLC's biggest song ever.

That would be Waterfalls off crazy, sexy, cool. Fantastic song, Waterfalls, no. fence to waterfalls, but I find myself drawn to the much more frequent TLC songs where they're at least a little pissed. They had a lot to be pissed about TLC. For example, selling 10 million copies of one album and still being broke. For example, Chili's on again, off again relationship with fan mail producer Dallas Austin, who was musically a genius, but if not a scrub, then at least somewhat of a clown romantically in Chili's opinion. For example, T-Bahs struggling with sickle cell anemia, which left her frequently hospitalized. For example, LeftEye's troubled relationship

with Star Atlanta Falcons' wide receiver, Andre Reisen. She said it was an abusive relationship, though the media mostly fixated on the time she burned his house down. No Scrubs is, quite specifically, a song about broke rando dumbasses ineptly flirting with TLC. But as beautiful, as elegant, As seductive as this song about rejecting seduction is, there is an elegant fury radiating from it as well. TLC didn't bring baggage to this song. They brought ammunition, and they didn't waste any of it. TLC formed in Atlanta in 1990.

One way to get their origin story is to watch the VH1 made-for-TV biopic Crazy Sexy Cool, the TLC story. A massive for VH1 ratings hit in 2013. Will Mama playing less. left eye and so forth. That movie was executive produced, was authorized by Teabaz and Chili, which, you know, so much for objectivity. But I still find it illuminating in these circumstances, this question of how the artists see themselves, or how the artists want you to see them,

how they insist on their own story being told. Even when there's some whitewashing, some scrubbing going on, their truth is just as valuable as whatever the truth might be. So, T-Bahs was originally from Des Moines, Iowa. I read recently, I very much enjoyed a 1995 interview with Sister to Sister Magazine in which T-Bos said, quote, I am from Des Moines, and I will say it all day long, never deny where I'm from and proud of it, but Des Moines sucks, end quote. My apologies to those of you from Des Moines, left Iowa's originally from Philadelphia. I don't want any trouble with Philadelphia. They meet in Atlanta. They form a trio with another aspiring star, Crystal Jones, hoping to combine R&B and rap,

and the collision of R&B and rap, known as New Jack Swing. They auditioned for a woman named Perry Reed, known professionally as Pebbles, who had a few big 80s pop hits, including Mercedes Boy, which is worth revisiting because Mercedes Boy is awesome, and it also gives you some idea of what cutting-edge pop music sounded like in 1987. Pebbles is in the early 90s married to L.A. Reed, the producer and superstar executive, who suggests that TLC, T.Bah's left-iron, Crystal, kick out Crystal, who per the movie, can actually sing or dance. Huh, they kick her out. Rosanda Thomas, then a backup dancer for

the R&B duo Damien Dame, joins TLC, taking on the nickname Chili, because it starts with a C. The girls signed some contracts without reading them. will one day sue both TLC and Viacom, which owns VH1, over her unflattering portrayal in the TLC movie. They settle out of court. The first TLC album, released in 1992, is called, Ooh, on the TLC Tip. I have been dreading, saying that album title out loud.

Possibly you have been dreading me saying that album title out loud. We're gonna get through this together. TLC's introduction to the wider world. The wider world's introduction to the star power of the left eye in particular is ain't too proud to beg. I know in my heart that this is not the best TLC era, but there is an exuberant chaos to this record that is enormously appealing in a public enemy bomb squad sort of way. All the sirens and ringing phones and clashing drum loops and whatnot. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of people involved.

TLC are signed to Atlanta's LaFace Records, co-owned by L.A. Reed and Kenneth Babyface Edmins, himself a superstar artist and writer and producer. Big help with the slow jams. One presumes, both those guys worked on TLC's record. So did Jermaine Dupree, who in 1992 helped bring the world Chris Cross. So did Dallas Austin, who in 1991, with the help of Michael Bivens from New Edition and Belle Biv-DeVoe,

helped bring the world both boys to men and another bad creation. All of these people, all of these artists, all of this music is essential to understanding where TLC came from. Have you listened to another bad creation lately? ABC? They were tweens. I'm delighted to say out loud that the first ABC album was called Coolin at the Playground, you know. Their hit song Aisha is worth revisiting because Aisha is awesome. And it also gives you some idea of what cutting-edge pop music sounded like in 1991. all of this music is part of tlc but does not begin to define tlc because t boz's left eye and chili are so magnetic that only they can define tlc sonically and visually their early videos are just these explosions of primary colors and outrageous fashion the baggy pants the overalls the day glow paint lisa's giant hat and giant sunglasses t boz's flintstones t-shirt i always quite liked you could see see these women so clearly even where they were on the radio and you could technically only hear them. They sounded like your friends, like they'd never let you down, like they'd always give it to you straight, hence the condom. Right. Also, Lisa Lopez is known as left eye because of the condom affixed to her regular size glasses where the left lens should be.

Safe sex, the vital life or death importance of safe sex is a major theme, arguably the major theme, of the first TLC record, which will eventually sell four million copies in the United States alone. It was striking to me that two of the pop groups most outspoken in song about safe sex in the early 90s were TLC and Salt and Peppa, who of course just named a whole hit song, Let's Talk About Sex. Lisa's condom glasses are a provocation, sure, but they're the furthest thing from an empty provocation. This is strikingly wholesome provocation. Put this on, she is saying, with her glasses. As the stakes get higher for TLC

as they sell way more records, as the shock value dials up both on their records and on the news, bear in mind that these are not people content with mere shock value. Their biggest hits are explicitly about something. Probably their biggest hit ever, for example,

dedicates its second verse explicitly to the HIV crisis. Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance. Okay, here's the chorus to Waterfalls. I'm not a monster. Once again, if you're old enough to rent a car, I'm guessing you can see Waterfalls, the song, whenever you hear Waterfalls, the song, the sexy predator, blickled silhouettes in the video. So we're on to 1994 and Crazy Sexy Cool, an 11 million copies sold thanks primarily, but not entirely, to Waterfalls. produced and co-written by the Atlanta

production crew, Organized the Noise, who, of course, worked extensively with Outcast. The TLC biopic would like to make it clear that Pebbles is no longer involved, though Dallas Austin and Babyface and Jermaine Dupree are back, alongside a few other artists,

most notably Sean Puffy Combs. But forget all those guys. Crazy sexy cool, of course, is where T-Bos, left eye, and chili become indomitable megastars. Megastars who talk about selling 10 million albums and still being broke, of course. It's striking to me that two of the groups most famous for selling tons of records but not making any money were TLC and Salt and Pepper.

Even so, even now, when you hear even like two seconds of creep, here's two seconds of creep. You can see creep also just by hearing creep, the pajamas. Google the outtake from Atlanta, the show where the dudes are all dancing to creep. The TLC sound and style is just slightly less chaotic now. It's slicker, it's brighter, it's bigger, it's massive. But it's still forward-thinking. It's still attacks from odd angles. It's still unexpected, even if you've heard one of these songs 50,000 times.

Waterfalls is extra wholesome provocation. It's this gigantic karaoke supernova anthem about restraint. about caution. Don't do that is just such a bizarre message for a huge pop song. Think of how good your song has to be so that everyone loves it, even though you're basically telling everyone to stay in their lane. It's as conscious as any conscious rap you'd care to name and like 50,000 times more fun than conscious rap. TLCR cutting edge pop music in 1994. Their every move is the new tradition. 1994 is also the year left-eye burns her boyfriend Andre

Risen's house down. This is another one of these infamous celebrity pop star incidents that played out in real time, almost as slapstick tabloid comedy, just something for CNN and MTV News to chuckle about. It's a darker, more violent, more action-packed version of Shnayette O'Connor, ripping up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, or Fiona Apple saying this world is bullshit at the VMA. or much later, Britney Spears, shaving her head and whacking an SUV with an umbrella.

It's one of these controversies largely dismissed by much of the media at the time as Crazy Pop Star does crazy thing, without much concern for why she might have done it. So in 1994, in the aftermath of left eye burning Andre Reisand's house down, TLC are on the cover of Vibe magazine, dressed up like firemen. The headline in the magazine is The Fire This Time. time. Incredible, but Lisa Lopez, who is five foot one and 23 years old at this point, also talks in that story about the police investigation of the fire, about showing the police photos of the bruises on her face. The vibe story talks about an earlier altercation in September

1993 in a grocery store parking lot in Atlanta, where bystanders reported seeing Andre hit Lisa and then fire a gun into the air. Andre and Lisa both denied to the police that any assault occurred. In the Vibe story, Risen denies all allegations of abuse. But Vibe also quotes L.A. Reed saying, the bottom line is that Lisa is a victim more than anything. People have got to ask themselves how there can be a fight between an all pro athlete and a little girl. So now, when you're watching the hit TLC biopic, go ahead and enjoy that scene of Lil Mama, dumping a bunch of shoes in a bathtub and lighting them on fire because they're not her But be careful with this word crazy.

Be careful with this idea of Lisa simply as the crazy one. Here's Lisa talking to vibe. Crazy, sexy, cool is a word we created to describe what's in every woman. Every woman has a crazy side, a sexy side, a cool side. A lot of our producers misunderstood us when we told them the idea. They do a crazy song for me, a sexy song for chili, and a cool song for Tian. We had to explain that crazy sexy cool doesn't just describe us individually. It describes all the parts of every woman.

Can you imagine driving around? It's not even your car. Driving around and seeing one of these three women walking down the street and having the audacity to think, I'm going to yell something out the window that'll make her want to have sex with me. What the hell are you doing? This is a guy that thinks he's flying is also known as a bustle. Always taking out what he wants and just sits on his broken. This is incredibly helpful.

The opening lines to No Scrubs, incredibly helpful. Every pop song that uses slang in the song title should be required by law to define the slang term within the first four lines of the song. They should amend the Constitution, the Scrubs doctrine. No Scrubs primarily belongs to Chile. The way she's luring you and pulling you closer while singing about pushing you as far away as possible, it's just the most stupendous pop star shit imaginable. No Scrubs is also about restraint now that I think about it for two seconds.

It's don't do that applied now to half the population by the other superior half of the population. No Scrubs was produced and co-written by Kevin Shakespeare Briggs, and Left Eye, of course, wrote a verse, but the bulk of the song was co-written by Candy Burris and Tamika Tiny Cottle of the Atlanta R&B group, Escape, who for sure had some jams. Here's an escape jam.

You can't hang, fellas. Trust me. Here's the chorus to No Scrubs, by the way. I'm not a monster. I'm guessing you can see this song, too, just by hearing it. TLC's spaceship phase, their science fiction phase, the silver metallic outfits, especially where they're pretending to beat each other up at the end of the video because the set is rotating and they're trying not to fall over.

Fanmail was largely produced by Dallas Austin, who by this point has a child with Chile, though still often a rocky relationship with Chile. There's a lot of Y2K anxiety on this record. It's about the future and sounds like the future. The future, of course, in 1999. Sounds quite a bit like Timberland in places. But it often imagines the future is a very chilly, noisy, eerie, almost confrontationally intimate place. One of my favorite things about TLC album covers is that a different member of the group is in the middle on each of their first three covers.

It's T-Bahs this time. Their faces are tinted metallic blue with a backdrop of binary code, all the zeros and ones. TLC are in the Matrix. TLC are the Matrix. Fanmail is dedicated, of course, to their fans who remain legion. T-Bah says that when she met Lady Gaga in 2013, Lady Gaga raved about how Unprety changed her life because she was an Unprety outcast, too.

Unpity was driven by acoustic guitar and spare an enormously vulnerable, and of course itself, a number one hit. There's this push and pull throughout fan mail. TLC are superstars, but they're also just people. delicate, exposed people. There's all these amazing paradoxes. There's a tremendous warmth even to the chilliness. Drake liked that song,

fan mail, apparently, which of course means that Drake seized upon that song in 2016 and renamed it, I Get Lonely 2 because Drake gets Lonely 2, and he clarified that he gets lonely 2. Drake? He's got good taste. at least Drake does.

I'm going to level with you. Left Eye is more of a fleeting presence on the fan mail album. There were internal tensions, as there always are, that robotic voice chanting just like you in the TLC version of that song. That was VIC-V-I-C-E, the Android TLC created to rap, often, in Left Eye's place. But all in fighting aside, it's just tragic to contemplate what these three women would have gone on to make together in the actual future. Lisa Lefti Lopez died in a car crash in Honduras on April 25th, 2002. I didn't have the heart to even foreshadow that here. I don't really have the heart to even

contemplate what a devastating loss this was, the person and the artist. She brought this swagger to TLC and the dexterity and the danger, and on no scrub, she makes it clear that nobody was on her level, but she made everyone want to keep trying to get there. anyway. If you can't spatially expand my horizons, then it leaves you in a class with scrubs, never rising. I don't find a surprise, and if you don't have the cheese to please me and bounce from here to the coast of overseas. Left Eye had put out one troubled solo album, Supernova in 2001. The next TLC album, which T-Baz and Chili finished after Left Eye passed, was released in October 2002 and was called 3D.

That album title always upsets me a little. It's not that TLC were two-dimensional now without left-eye. It's that pop music as a whole suddenly felt two-dimensional. Aaliyah had died in a plane crash just eight months before Left Eye's death, and the loss of those two people alone. It's just too much to bear still. I think about all the ways a unified TLC would have gone on to define cutting-edge pop music in the 21st century or into the 25th century.

Or really, I think about how it's beyond my... imagining. These people really you just watched them in awe, which was preferable often to trying to talk to them or in any way interact with them. Briefly, let's address a few unfortunate byproducts of no scrubs, the first of which comes to us courtesy of Weezer. Weezer! Hopefully this show never gets around to exploring this phenomenon of awkward, white rock bands awkwardly covering rap and R&B hits for comedic effect, dynamite hack doing boys in the hood and what have you. That came out in the year 2000.

Whoops, outside my purview. Too bad. We dodged that bullet. Weezer covered no scrubs in 2019 on the Teal album. And in deference to the sentiment of the original song, I will keep my mouth shut and just tell you that Chili apparently loved it. She'd love to perform it with Weezer sometime. day. As for covers of no scrubs in general, she once said, quote, I totally get why any girl would do it,

but when guys do it, I go, clearly, they're not scrubs. If they were scrubs, they wouldn't sing the song with this type of confidence. End quote. Fair enough. Speaking of confidence, there is also the matter of sporty thieves. Sporty thieves were a bunch of dudes from yonkers. In 1999, they released an answer song to No Scrubs called No Pigeons. That's Thieves with a Z and Pigeons with a Z. I can't in good conscience play you the chorus to no pigeons. I'm not a monster.

Melody was not Sporty Thieves's strong suit. But okay, this was pretty funny. It was kind of funny. The memes weren't as dank in 1990. No pigeons felt like an admission of defeat in advance. It felt like a sign of respect to TLC and the utter dominance TLC projected, even at their most vulnerable, because very few people in history have sounded so inviting while singing, in essence,

get out my life, why don't you, babe? We're so thrilled today to welcome Danielle Smith, host of the new Ringer podcast, Black Girl Songbook. She's the former editor-in-chief of Billboard and Vibe, an author of the upcoming book Shine Bright, a personal history of black women in pop. Thank you so much for being here, Danielle. Thank you for having me.

I'm thrilled to be here. We're thrilled to have you. You started at Vibe in the early 90s. I think you were running Vibe by 1997 or so. What was the perception of TLC around that time? They're superstars, crazy, sexy, cool is this massive success, but there's also a lot of personal chaos around them. Do you think they were getting the respect they did?

deserved critically and artistically, or did that chaos kind of drown them out? I definitely don't think that chaos drowned them out. That's how big they were, honestly. It was a TLC world, and we were just living in it. They really controlled everything. I mean, everybody forgets, and I think it's still true, that they're the largest selling girl group in the history of music overall. And so they were never not on the radio. They were never not on, You know, MTV, when MTV mattered with regard to playing videos, they were never not on BET. They were everywhere. If you went out, that's what was playing.

If you were walking down the street, that's what was coming out of people's car windows. It was a fun time. What do you think it was about them? Like, there were other people mixing rap and hip-hop, you know, into a new kind of pop. But did they sound like the future to you, you know, in 1994 or in 1999? What was it about them that made them so emblematic of that time? Well, I think the main thing that made them so emblematic was their style. I think that we had grown very used to girl groups, always matching their outfits, number one, usually wearing gowns or dresses.

And all of a sudden, here were these three girls who looked like they were on their way to a rap show. and they were going to be the cutest girls in the space when they got there. And they walked with a lot of sass and confidence down to the hat to the back. So it was so freeing. If you were a girl in rap back then like I was and loved rap and went out to rap shows, man, it just looked like, finally I have somebody that represents me. Right. There's this new Britney Spears documentary about how gross the means.

media treatment of Britney Spears has always been the way the media's over-sexualized this teenage girl and then punished her for being too sexual. It's amazing to me now that any major female pop star even survived the 90s. Were TLC at least able to fight back against that exploitation a little? I mean, they were, but it was still rough on them. It was hard being a black girl in pop back then. In many ways, it's the same now. And it definitely was that way in the 60s, 70s, and So I think the thing that helped them is that because of their style, as I mentioned, because of their manner of dress and the way they carry themselves, they just look like the wrong three chicks to be messing with. And I think it helped them a lot. I think when they did interviews, when they appeared at award shows, you didn't look like you really wanted to mess with them.

I'm not trying to get in Teabaz's way on any occasion. You know what I mean even right now. So, and I say that with massive love and massive respect, Teabos, wherever you are right now. But I think that did help them a little bit. And also, it was a time, I think, when groups started being just more outspoken about things like that. I think we were at the beginning of that. And I think they were very clear why they dressed the way they dressed and why they moved, the way they moved. That's what I love about No Scrubs is it's a beautiful song about how you should not even attempt to approach me, you know?

Like, just don't even try to talk to me. I know you want to, but like, don't. Don't do it. Man, listen, that song, like that song? That song. I remember, so this was, I mean, am I here to, like, tell old stories from the old days and be, like, all nostalgic? Is that the goal? That is the vibe around here, so please.

Okay, so since I have my freedom to do so, I'm lucky that I first heard the song in a suite at the four seasons in. New York City. L.A. Reed used to have listenings there, private listenings, for journalists. And he would either do them in his office or do them in the suite. And it would be so dope because he would literally have speakers floor to ceiling. I don't even know. He had to have run out the whole floor and maybe the floor below because it was like being like at a concert. So, you know, I'm leaving work. I go up there. And, you know, I knew L.A. We had a business relationship, but I could tell when he was excited about something, a piece of music. He's from the Clive Davis School. They can't hide it. And he played no scrubs. And I've been in a lot of

listening sessions. And I like to feel like I can pick number ones too. I feel like that's my superpower. It's a good superpower. It's really not that great. But I've been right a couple of times. But, man, I definitely was just like, this is a whole different type of record, and it's so good and it's so sneaky, as you said. It's so pretty and it's so, like, disrespectful at the same time. Yes. So, man, I just, I think I listened to it with Mr. Reed for like probably six or eight times, and I'm still listening to it with the same joy. Do you think the other people in the room, the other people heard it that way, knew it too? Was it like an instance, this is going to be one of the songs, if not the song, that defines them?

Was that obvious even in the moment? I mean, like I said, it was just he and I and one of his colleagues when I heard it. But I can only imagine. I mean, the song is quite magical. You know how much labor went into it, right? From the negotiations to who got the song even and all of those. things, but it all just rings off so effortless like it was effortless. Right, right.

There's a great vibe cover story on TLC from 1994. Joan Morgan wrote it, and it was right after the Andre Risen house fired on the cover TLC are dressed up as firefighters. And I saw on Twitter someone recently asked you about it, and you just said, it was an intense editorial time. I was wondering how so. I mean, in fairness, the entire history of vibe is an intense editorial time. I can imagine, yeah.

Yes, the great Joan Morgan wrote that story, and I edited the story, and the great Alan Lighttop edited me on the story. Just when I think about those times, man, like, we all knew, like, so well, like what to do and how to be editors and how to sell a magazine. We were all under pressure all the time. The magazine always seemed like if we don't sell this issue, the magazine is going to go under. So there was that type of intensity,

especially at the very beginning. And then rap and R&B was so alive and so, like, it was never not moving. Like, it was always something was happening. There was tragedy. There was joy. There was death. There was life.

There was marriage. There was hate. Like, I mean, you, like, everything was happening. Yeah. Setting trends, trends getting stolen. And so then Lisa burns the house down. There's no way, even with everything that was going on in rap, that we saw that coming.

Yeah. And I don't think that many of us, frankly, were even thinking about it as intelligently as we might now with regard to domestic violence and things like that. Right. That's to me when Lisa got this reputation for being the quote-unquote crazy one. Mm-hmm. And no one was really talking about her partner being crazy. Right, right, exactly. It's a story to her mind about domestic abuse.

And I feel like it would be talked about completely differently now as opposed to them. Like almost everything major that happened in pop, especially to female pop stars back then. Yeah, it was wild. I wasn't at the shoot. But it was not an easy decision for that to be the cover. There was a lot of conversation about how they came to be wearing the outfits. And yeah, it was a while time. What was the response to the story to the cover?

Pretty overwhelmingly. We paid attention. There was no social media. So we literally paid attention to the letters that we received. Right. vibe, I will say, we got an insane amount of reader mail. There's just not that many black publications. People were very engaged. I feel like just the way black people over-indexed at social, they over-indexed on writing letters to the editor. So we got a lot of mail. And people, you know,

I would say, if I remember correctly, that it was pretty strongly in favor. One, Joan wrote a brilliant story. That's the first part. And then obviously the images were compelling and on time for the moment. And I mean, yeah, it sold like crazy. Yeah, awesome. Do you have a particular favorite TLC album or era? Like, I could have easily talked about, ain't too proud to beg for 20 minutes or waterfalls, of course, but no scrubs seems to be the biggest TLC song now.

Like, what holds up the best for you? Oh, I'm that girl that's here for creep. So, like, I'm what? Like, are you kidding? Like, the first album is like, oh, okay, I'm in it for the clothes. Right. The second album, I guess I was kind of still in it for the clothes because those satin pajamas. It's very nice pajamas, yes.

Are etched into my brain. I wanted them. I don't have really the shape to be doing all of that, but at the same time, I felt like I could maybe try. And the thing was, though, it's like there was a song out not too long before that from Luther Vandross. I think it's a cover of a Stevie Wonder song, Creep into My Dreams or whatever. And I'm like, you're going to come out with a song called Creep on top of Luther's, like, iconic record? Like, are you serious? And then it's working?

Like, it's working. Yeah. I love that record. It's like classic mid-tempo situation and just, and also of the three, you know, everybody has their favorite Supreme. Everybody has their favorite member of TLC, and I do rock with T-Boss. T-Boss. Yeah. Is that just because you don't want to be on her bad side?

And it's kind of that, honestly. But the thing is, Tebas' haircut was always, like, so amazing. And let's be honest, Tebas got so much bass in her voice. Like, her voice is, like, the sexiest, like, voice. One of the more underrated vocalists, I think, in R&B and pop. And, you know, everyone doesn't sing with the gospel, you know, bedrock. And Teaboss doesn't. It doesn't.

Yeah. You're from Oakland, so I wanted to ask you about EnVogue, who were huge starting in 1990. I think Funky Divas came out in 1992, the same year as the first TLC album. People seem to tend to think of Atlanta as like this hermetically sealed lab, but is there a lot of NVogue in TLC, for starters? You know what's so funny is I really think of them in the same sentence. That's wild. Is there a lot of in Vogue and TLC?

I mean, there's a lot of, you know, it's more to me that there's just from a long tradition of girl groups. I think that TLC chose to turn the model on its head. In Vogue chose to push it to its extreme. But I don't know if, man, listen, I was in Atlanta when LaFace was down there and all of that stuff was jumping off pebbles and all the cool kids worked at LaFace. And it didn't seem sealed to me. It seemed like Mardi Gras. Like, it was a party town, man. And it seemed like every black person from around the United States of America who was a music creative or a sports star or anything like that was moving to Atlanta.

People were crawling at the New Harlem. And it was alive, man. I remember when I was R&B editor at Billboard, I went down there. We used to have to do this thing where you had to cover a local record store whenever you traveled for any reason. You had to find a local store. Like interview them and stuff? Oh, yeah. See, say it just like that because that's just how it was.

It was so boring, right? So people would be so lacking personality, but not at the Atlanta record store. No. It was on and popping at the record store. Yes. So it was a Atlanta was alive, but I'm from Oakland, so nothing compares. No, well, I was going to ask. At the early 90s in the Bay Area, you have EnVogue, you have digital underground.

You have Tony, Tony, Tony. I mean, what was it like to be there right as the city is helping define rap and R&B for the whole country? I was having the time of my life. I would not be sitting here with you right now if it wasn't for that energy in Oakland at that time. There is no way that I would be a music writer right now. If it wasn't for the Tonys, if it wasn't for InVogue, if it wasn't for Too Short, if it wasn't for Digital Underground, other random crews like K Cloud and the crew and Primo and all these. bands and stuff. Everybody didn't get famous. You know what I mean? Spice One. Everybody didn't get

famous, but everybody was doing the damn thing. And if you were my age at that time and we were all coming up together, like, it infused you with like ambition and it infused you with like trying to make the world understand rap. People got to remember. It was a subculture back then. So we were a part of a vibrant subculture. I sound like my colleague and friend Ann Powers from NPR, Ann and I both worked at SF Weekly. And when I say Ann and I both worked at SF Weekly, I mean, and brought me to SF Weekly. But it was a vibrant subculture. It was the most fun I ever had in my entire life, probably until I married my husband.

Man, the shows, the parties, all of it. I know a lot of those people personally, and they're a good group. And I can't not mention Stanley Kirk Burrell, aka MC Hammer, who really jumped off for all of us. Yeah, yeah. It's so devastating to think about losing Left Eye and O'Lea in a matter of months. I think it was like eight months exactly. Like, is there any way to describe what we lost, like what black music lost when we lost just those two people? Yeah, it's too much.

I mean, I have an ongoing thing where I don't think those two have, they have yet to be mourned properly by the culture. They were not held up as high as they could be in life, and that has carried over into their death and afterlife. I feel like I'm always searching for Alia's music on the DSPs. I feel like her catalog is spread out or not organized. It's terrible. You can't get to it, right? I feel like everyone paints left eye as like, oh, she was crazy, and then she got a right, and she went to give back to the community,

and then she got crazy, and somehow there was a car accident, and then it's like, but where's the movie? Right, right. Where's the documentary? where's the deep and intense like investigation into that whole situation the week before her death and the week afterward? Where's that podcast for, I mean, maybe that's what I should be doing over at Black Girl Songbook, but I'm not the only person. Like, there's so many great black culture writers, so many culture writers and creators, period. Those women need their legacies wrapped up better than they are right now.

Yeah. I love Black Girl songbook so much and I'm so happy. Thank you. And it's like, what are your goals for it, you know, ultimately? And is that your goal for it to try and raise up these people who are just not thought of the way that they should be, you know, not mourned the way that they should be and just celebrated the way that they should be. Is that what you're trying to do? I mean, to be honest, yes. So, you know, you mentioned my book, Shine Bright, a personal history of Black women of pop. And the thing that I realized when I was researching that book is how little there is out there about black women in pop. And that if we didn't have magazines like vibe, like Ebony, like Jet, like Essence, and so many other affinity publications, we would know very much about the genius of black women at all, especially the details about it.

Right. And so over the course of researching and writing that book, I just said to myself, the book is not going to be enough. Yeah. I'd like to speak on it. And I'm so blessed and excited to be in business with The Ringer and Spotify on this.

Yeah, because, you know, I've been listening to the Supremes all week just because Mary Wilson just passed, and that's not somebody that's known as well as she should be. She's not. I mean, one of the more ridiculous stories of my life is that so as it's like a senior I think in high school or a junior we had to write a paper for the year and I decided that my paper was again this is like a 12 page paper so not even

that many words right so I decided that my topic was how the Beatles affected teen culture in America wow that's going to take way more than 12 pages so like no one told me shout out to mrs. Lugent Mrs. Lugent you could have told me to like narrow my topic But the thing is, doing that research, right? Also, the Supremes are right next to the Beatles, right? Right, of course. They traded number ones back and forth. They were trading like platinum albums, gold albums, back and forth.

They recorded each other's records, right? But who's held up in the culture even now as the geniuses? Right, of course. So this is the kind of thing I've been thinking about forever. Well, I'm so glad to talk to you, Danielle. Thank you so much for being here. No, no, no. I thank you.

I love the podcast as well. I feel super jamming to be on it. Like I'm over here with the cool kids where you guys are doing all the cool S-H-I-T. So thank you for having me, and I hope you guys have me back. Anytime. Absolutely, we will. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Thanks very much to our guest, Danielle Smith. Thanks to our producers, Isaac Lee and Justin Sales. And thanks, as always, to you for listening. And now, without further ado, Here are TLC with no scrubs. We'll see you next week.