Doomed to Fail - Ep 155: Don't go chasing waterfalls in Honduras - Lisa Left Eye Lopes

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

In this episode, we’re spotlighting Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and her pivotal role in the creation of TLC. From her bold audition that caught the attention of Perri “Pebbles” Reid to her dynamic partnership with T-Boz and Chilli, Left Eye’s energy, creativity, and vision helped shape TLC’s iconic sound and image.Of course, it wasn't all fun and games - we'll talk about Left Eye's issues with addiction, abuse, and her creative frustration with TLC. A bright light put out too soon.TW // Domestic Abuse💫 #LeftEye #TLC #90sMusic #GirlGroupLegends #LeftEyeLegacySourcesCrystal Jones: 5 Things To Know About Original TLC Member Replaced By Chilli - https://hollywoodlife.com/feature/who-is-crystal-jones-tlc-5109865/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/916726.stm Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we're back. Back. Yeah, I had to pause to drink water because yesterday I drank zero water. I only drank wine.

And I'm like, I should drink water. I should remember that I should take care of me. You know, I had a good amount of wine. yesterday too and i went to work out this morning was like i he did not i i i'm too old to like enjoy wine that much do both yeah that's fair here we are um but in theory uh people are gearing up for thanksgiving yes they're probably listening to this the day maybe the day before thanksgiving um if so hopefully everybody has some fun times yeah yeah welcome to doomed to fail everyone on this Thanksgiving week.

We have the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures, and I'm Taylor, joined by Fars. Yep. We are here. We covered my topic earlier today, and now we have Taylor's topic, which I am dying to learn more about. I was just going to, I was also, I feel like someday we should talk about just like Thanksgiving itself and how the reason that the Puritans came to America is because they sucked. no one wanted to hang out with them

I mean again I am thankful that I'm here now especially in light of everything for real as long as we can be so I'm in like I told you last time I am in Spokane even though it's also spelled Spokane but Spokane Washington and with my family

and we just like all we do is lay around and do nothing like I haven't left the house in several days we just lay around And we were watching music videos on, like, the TV or whatever, and a video came up and for the video, Creep by TLC. Do you remember that one? They're wearing, like, big PJs. I don't. You can picture it.

So they're wearing these, like, amazing, gigantic silk pajamas. And it's all this wind. And I noticed that, like, there isn't a wrap in the video. So left eye, like, kind of does nothing the whole time. So that was really weird. Like, she, like, didn't, they didn't have the rap in there. So she just kind of dances around and doesn't do anything. And I'm like, that's really weird.

What's to do with that? So I'm going to talk about the life and death of Lisa left eye Lopez. Ooh, okay. So she was, she was born, Lisa Nicole Lopez with an S, Lopez, L-O-P-E-S, on May 27th, 1971 in Philadelphia. She grew up in, like, a really strict. military household. Her dad was in the military and he was probably abusive. He was kind of mean and probably an alcoholic as well. So her parents got divorced when she was young and she like spent

a lot of her time like in her high school and kid years living with her grandma. So a little bit of a tumultuous like growing up life. But then she ended up, you know, staying in touch with her siblings and all of that. She liked music from right away. She played a bunch of instruments. Her dad actually taught her how to do that and she started a little gospel group with her siblings and they was seeing it like churches and things like that and they would like write their own music and at some point someone tells her that her left eye is very pretty which is odd that's how she got the name right yeah so someone says like you're really pretty especially your left eye that is very strange i never very specific i never noticed anything about her left eyes so they

yeah I mean she's very pretty but like they you know they said that to her so that's why she that's why she has the nickname left eye and that happened like in the 90s and in the late 1990s she moved to Atlanta so Atlanta was where there was like a lot of like hip-hop R&B music being made and she brought identical she's totally symmetrical they just call her eyes Lopez it doesn't have the same ring yeah Eyes Lopez. So she moved to Atlanta. She had a keyboard in like $1,000 and it was going to be a dancer and just wanted to, you know, start making music.

There's a record producer. There's a lot of record producers in here in the story, one specifically named Ian Burke. And he was working with a young woman named Crystal Jones on a new group. So they wanted to do like a belbiv-de-vo kind of group, all girls and do like a combination of like different styles in the group. So it was like Crystal's idea, and she ended up finding Lisa and finding T-Bos. So the other one, the T-T is just like T-T and then Boss is like boss. That's what that nickname is. So it was T-Boss left eye and Crystal. And they had an audition with the producer Pebbles Reed, and Pebbles said to kick Crystal out. She didn't like Crystal's vibe, wanted her out, so they kicked Crystal out.

An article I read that Crystal wrote later, I can interview with her later. She said that there was a contract that they asked them to sign, and T-Baz and LeftEye signed her right away. But Crystal wanted to read it, and she didn't want to, like, just sign a contract to give her life away. And they were like, nope, forget it and kicked her out. Yeah, that's how they do all. It's so crooked. The whole, like, it's like those temptation deals where you're like basically like a slave to the label forever. It's exactly that.

That's exactly what they signed, too. but Crystal left and they found a woman, a young woman named Rezonda Thomas, and they already had the marketing and they were already going to be TLC, so they didn't know what to do. So left I gave her the nickname Chili, and that's how she became chilly. She just made that up. She had been a backup dancer. So that's how she got Chili, so now they can be TLC. Lisa wrote a lot of their songs.

She wrote her own raps. She picked out their matching out. She was, like, really, like, involved in their style. She also would wear, remember she would wear a condom over her right eye, not their left eye, that's not right eye, or her right eye, in her glasses just to, like, promote safe sex and, like, talk about it. She also was sometimes to do, like, the black bar under her eye, like a football player. And she had her, like, left eyebrow pierce to, like, make that left eye stand out more.

Yeah, too. You know. You know. You have to flex that left eye. Yeah. So she signed the deal with LaFace Records, which was owned by Pebbles Reed and Babyface. And other producers, like Jermaine Dupree was in there. Dallas Austin was a person who, like, worked on Creep, which is like one of the big famous ones too. So they had a bunch of a bunch of, a bunch of like really great producers working for them and making songs for them.

In 1992, their first album came out. It has a terrible name. It's called, ooh, on the TLC Tip. That's the name of the album. Like, I don't even know how to say. It doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe back then it was a good name. But it was great.

And it had a bunch of songs, and they got pretty popular. And so it's 1992 and they're living in Atlanta. The first album's album is out. They have some hit singles. Ain't Too Proud to Begg is like the main hit single from that album. And Lisa starts dating a football player for the Atlanta faculty. the story. This is a story I'm most familiar with. Yes. So his name is Andre Rison, Risen, Risen. And it's not great from this art. He's not great. He definitely, there's definitely abuse involved. And she has

alcohol issues. So they're both like very, it's like a very hostile relationship. And on September 2nd, 1993, she filed an assault charge against him. But they're still going to get back together. And they're going to get back together and on and off for like a really long time. But sometime in 1993, she found him in bed with another woman. So she threw a bunch of teddy bears that they had, they had given her, into the tub and set them on fire. So in that case, the tub was like a big marble bathtub. They had like a big mansion that they lived in. And the marble didn't burn, but it was ruined. So Andre had to get a new bathtub. So he replaced the bathtub that she set on fire with a fiberglass bathtub. He didn't like, get a marble one again and then on june 9th 1994 um she she alleges that he he was beating her and they were in this big physical fight and she threw some new shoes of his into the new tub that was fiberglass and set those on fire but fiberglass isn't like marble and it burns and that's what burned their entire house down there was the second time she had done it first story i thought

i didn't i only heard about the shoes yeah yeah so she had done it before before and the first time I guess you can do it if you like you know if you're gonna have been on fire dramatically do it in a marble tub if you want to burn on your house do it in a fiberglass tub. Just break up for the love of God just break. Dude like

if she burnt your tub once that should be enough. Just break up. Yeah and don't like don't stay with someone who hurts you. Just break up. I'm also super awful to say. That's really hard to say but like they should have broken

well yeah I read so I I don't totally subscribe to the well okay first off he's an NFL player so he probably was being the shot of her but she also sounds like a fucking nightmare

like like I'm just saying she sounds like an absolute like they both should have called the quits they both should have called the quits yes after I thought that I was like wait I don't mean that it's easy to get out of an abusive relationship

because I know that it's hard to get out of an abusive relationship but also like no this isn't like a woman who's like you know depended on Andre Risen to pay her no totally she's a fucking millionaire herself like they're both incredibly successful people

not a millionaire so let me tell you I'll let me tell you about that okay I backtrack everything I just said yeah so I don't know where we're going with that but yes it was not good it's it's less hard to get out of a situation like this

when you have infinite resources. Like if Jay-Z was beating Beyonce, like Beyonce could buy the state they live in and like house herself. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Are we arguing or something? I don't know. I don't think so. I just, I don't want to even to feel like I think it's easy to leave the relationship because they know it's hard. Do you feel guilty to saying it?

Anyway, I do. But then I'm like, well, like you were saying, just break up. and I feel like that's similar to like people who murder their spouses. You're like, oh my God, I get a divorce, you know. I mean, yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, there's also like a ton of factors that go into stuff like that.

Again, when you look at like two people like this, like who are very, very young and or, I mean, I guess I assume they were really, really successful. At least Andre Ryzen is super successful or like financially successful. And like you would assume they're surrounded by people, but also you're not. tied to that person you're fucking touring you're either on the you're you don't think like it's yeah again like you keep i feel like you're picturing like someone married to someone who makes like 50,000 dollars a year and is like a small town i was and like yeah totally no i mean it was not good it was bad it was bad but they are going to continue to kind of date on and off until her death pretty much which is great um so she got five years of probation

and a $10,000 fine, and then she goes to rehab. So she goes to, like, a halfway home for her alcohol addiction. And while she was there, she didn't get to write for Crazy, Sexy Cool, which is, like, their big album that everybody knows. And so she felt like she was kind of left out on it. Like, she had some, like, very tiny little raps in the songs. And then, like, she used to sing backup vocals, but they had a studio person do it instead of her anyway.

So she kind of, like, felt like she was getting pushed out. crazy sexy cool does give them all a bunch of awards they got MTV video music award for video of the year they got best r&B album the Grammy and best R&B performance Grammy as well in into 96 they were artists of the year at the Billboard music awards so they were like like you said they looked very very successful but like we also said they signed a shitty ass deal so in 1995 the members of TLC filed for bankruptcy they received i don't really know exactly how album sells work but they received as a group 56 cents per album sold and they had to divide it up between themselves they also had to pay their own expenses so like if you have a good record deal like your expenses are covered but they had to pay for their food and their travel while they were touring um they also had to pay Lisa's legal fees from the arson and tebas has sickle cell anemia she still obviously still has it and so she did pay her medical bills too so after all of the fees all the medical bills each of them made like

50k a year after everything okay a year wow so they were not millionaires even though you would think that they would be but they were able to renegotiate their contracts they were able to trademark the name tlc because it was like their idea and and get some control over it after that so the more control of their music but they're kind of falling apart as a group um so it's been a couple years and they have another album called fan mail and then lisa goes out on her own and like makes a couple um she's guest stars and a bunch of other artists work as well um and she's kind of trying to get out so in may 1999 in vibe magazine she said quote i've graduated from this era i cannot i cannot stand 100% behind TLC and the music that is supposed to represent me.

So she's just like, it's not, it's not for me anymore and they're pissed. And then obviously, Chile and T-Bas were mad. And they said in another magazine, they said that Lisa doesn't respect the whole group. And she's only concerned, they said left eye is only concerned with left eye. So they're kind of like fighting back and forth in the media. So then she did the weird thing where she did like a press conference and called and she suggested this thing called The Challenge, and she said, I challenged Tian Watkins, T-Bahs, and Rosanda Thomas, Chile, to an album entitled

The Challenge, a three CD set that contains three solo albums. Each album will be due to the record label by October 1st, 2000. I also challenged Dallas and Manipulator Austin to produce all of the material and do it in a fraction of his normal rate. As I think about it, I'm sure LaFace would not mind throwing in a $1.5 million prize for the winner. So it sounds like wild idea, and they were like, about the girl. were like no and they called her heartless so they like didn't talk to her for a while

they were broken up at this point basically yeah and that would have been cool though a three CD set all three single albums yeah but I mean to me it like just hearing what you say it it didn't sound like a friendly thing no uh uh uh it sounded like antagonistic exactly they said no they called her heartless so they were like we're not doing this with you um she was the only one ever

actually out of the three to make a full solo album. There's been a couple of singles. Her solo album was called Heartless, and then she was halfway done with another one when she did die later. During the late 90s, she did a ton of producing, joining other artists. She was in an in sync song, like a bunch of other things. She also during this time adopted two children. I'm not super clear when or why, but one person was a woman she met at like the halfway house that she was living in. She adopted that person's daughter and then another child that's some other point as well um she was on who wants to be a millionaire so which was like for charity because she was saying missed and she ended up winning

$32,000 for her for charity um and she was in like some really early reality shows or she was like finding musicians and like finding bands um but she started to kind of get do a couple things that were like a little weird like she was definitely like pulling away from TLC like they were they weren't officially broken up but they were like not talking to each other and in 2000 she was missing she didn't attend an event in Las Vegas and then like a family thing in Atlanta and the paper the newspaper articles I read they're like she's missing her family's like where are you and then she said that she just like went on a road trip she just drove down through Central America and she was like I just need a break

and everybody leave me alone so it's like her mental state was like not very good during that time she was just like trying to escape I actually watched there's a documentary called The Last Days of Lisa yeah I saw that too yeah so I was watching a little bit of that. She's just like, I'm exhausted. I need to break, you know. So she found that she loved the country of Honduras and she wanted to go down there and bring a lot of her family and friends. So she brought like a group of people. They were going to do like a 30 day retreat to do like yoga and numerology and like all these things. And she also had bought 80 acres of land to make into like a school and art center for children of Honduras. So she was like trying to do

good things down there. So she had like her group of people there and was about to start this like 30 day retreat. When in 2002, she was in a van driven by her assistant, Stephanie, and they hit a young boy named Byron Isabel Fuentes Lopez. So a little boy who was like running through the street. They took his, they picked him up. Lisa held him as like bloody body in the back of the van while someone else gave the kid CPR and they brought him to the hospital, but he was, he was brain dead by the time they brought him there and he died and she felt like there was this like weird shadow following her around Honduras and that it was trying to kill her but it killed the boy instead because the boy ran in front so she was like she no one got like charged for it but she was like very

very very guilty she paid for all the funeral arrangements she gave the family some money like all these things that she just felt like like it was happening to her you know yeah yeah that would uh that would give me pawns too so two weeks later on april 25th 2002. She was driving a Mitsubisi Montero SUV in Las Sibia, Honduras. And she was driving. And this is in the documentary because they were filming it. Like obviously it was going to be called the last days of Lisa Lopez. I was going to be called something else, you know, but they were like filming their like adventures and going being down there. So in this big passenger van and she's driving. She's not wearing her seatbelt. The person is like in this front seat with her. And they're

videotping her. There's some girls in the back playing like people in the van. And the and she there's a truck they're on like a pretty windy like mountainous road it's like very green and they all of a sudden someone goes like look out and you hear oh no and then you hear the screech and then the the thing goes like to static but she was driving she made like a sharp left to avoid the car and then her her vehicle rolled over several times hit some trees she got thrown out of the car and she died instantly of a fracture to the base of the cranium. So no one else died. She was the only one and she was only 30 when she died. She was buried in Georgia on May 2nd, 2002 on her casket. They engraved dreams are hopeless aspirations and hopes of coming true. Believe

in yourself. The rest is up to me and you, which is obviously from waterfalls. And And her family runs and still runs a foundation to help kids, I think what is it, what do they do? What does her foundation do? She has a foundation. I know it's to help children. Her parents, her family still, like, runs it. They have a, it's for neglected and abandoned youth to enjoy their, to help them increase their quality of life, essentially. That's nice.

So that's nice. And then I think, remember, I think T-Bos and Chili had like, at one point they had like a reality show that was like, are you the girl to get a new member about them if they ever got a new member? I think they just like, the two of them still kind of tour sometimes. That sounds familiar. Was she going to go back to music? Was that the book?

I think so. It sounds like she was like doing her own stuff. Because she was halfway through her second solo album when she died. So I think she was probably. um going to but she also just like i need a break so bad you know like for the past like 10 years of her life had been like insane you know i can only imagine uh the daily did you listen to the daily this weekend no so they cup you would you would know this better than i would so they covered this k-pop um star who's the first Korean woman to have like a solo billboard top

10 or something. Like, I don't know music that well, but whatever. She accomplished something kind of big. Her name's Rosie or Rose. Do you know her? Uh-uh. I don't know how any of this stuff works, but apparently she was talking, she was talking to the daily and being interviewed. And apparently what they do

with K-pop these days is they have these, like, it's kind of like the parliament situation where they're just like built to be like famous, you know? Yeah, they like make them in a factory. They make them in a factory. And so that's what I have. where some major company that does this was saying they're going to go to Australia.

She's from New Zealand and they were going to go to Australia and she flew Australia. She auditioned and then they like shipped her to South Korea and then kept her there like basically like just like all you do is like learn music and learn media training all this stuff for like years. And then you're off and trying to do your own thing. It just sounds like a very, I guess you're living your dream.

So it's not bad. but it also doesn't sound fun no it doesn't sound fun and there's plenty of stories of like you know famous people struggling with like addiction and doing like all kinds of the stuff you know so it sounds weird like Liam Payne the one direction guy who just died like he he went to rehab but he was but he had like a thing he was like they would they would do this like big show because they were like teenagers and then the management would just like lock them in their hotel rooms by themselves you know and just be like good night and then he would just be like good night and then he would just just like drink the mini bar because he's like what I'm supposed to do like have lots

energy like it's just like they yeah you're kind of treated like just like a showperson you know you're treated like a commodity yeah the way to do it is a solo way like the post malone taylor well I guess Taylor Swift got screwed over by that one guy yeah but she figured her she what she figured it up she did but like I think like that's the way to do it is like you just kind of get big enough to where you overpower like the industry mm-hmm mm-hmm but yeah Fun. Yeah, that Andre Risen

Stories is the thing that I remember the most. Totally. Besides waterfalls, obviously. I was like, this is a crazy story. I know I also hadn't realized that she'd already

done one of the baths, like already lit a baths up on fire. I did not know that. I did not know that. But I like his thinking. He was like, if this is going to keep happening, I'm not going to shell out for a marble tub.

Totally. But someone should have told him that if I broke glass first. And it keeps happening. You should break up. You should break up. Oh, God, totally. Your ex is allowed to set,

your partner is allowed to set fire to your house one time, one time. That's fair. One time. The second time, you got to cut it. Yeah, especially if you're like, cheating on her and being abusive, like, she's not for you. All the other factors involved. The cumulative picture is not one of a healthy relationship being painted.

It's not great. No. No, but it's sad. I'm sad for her. It's a short life. Hey, she still beat the 27 Club. She did. She did.

Was Alia 27? I feel like she was younger. Was she really younger than 27? Who's in the 27 club? Let's see. Oh my gosh, she was only 22 when she died. That's crazy. Poor thing. That's terrible.

Wow. I don't recognize a huge chunk of the names listed on Wikipedia for the 27 Club. Like, who's Barry Brown? I'm going to look. Chris Austin. I don't know who that is. Mia Zapata. Lead singer of the Gitts. I don't know who that is. All right, Kirk Cobain, now we're getting into something here. Wow. A Rolling Stones founder, guitarist, and Brian Jones drowned when he was 27?

This list is like, come on. Like, you got Hendricks, you got Cobain, like, you got, you got, Amy Winehouse. We don't need to, like, add Jesse Belbin. I'm just reading through this. I mean, there's a lot of people on this list. It's a huge list.

Wait, why is it Amy Whitehouse on here? She has to be on here. Yeah, she's on there. Okay. It's another sad one. Yeah. Anyway, now we're just, reading to ourselves. This is a silent reading portion. This is a silent reading portion

on the podcast. I hope you enjoy it. Join us. We're going to, we're going to, you can just do this on your own. Actually, you don't even have to be listening to us. Just turn off the radio. Just keep it on. Yeah. Keep this on and silent. Sweet. Well, thanks for Sharon Taylor. I

love learning about things that were relevant to my childhood, but I never understood because I was too young to understand them when they happened. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. That's all I have. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Please find us at Doom to FillPod on all social medias. Or send us an email, doomed tofillpod at Gpil.com. And happy, very Thanksgiving.

Woohoo. Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut off.