One Song - TLC's "Creep" with Rachel Lindsay

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Is creeping ever okay? If you ask Rachel Lindsay (co-host of the "Higher Learning" podcast)…it is when TLC does it. This time on One Song, Diallo is joined by Rachel (who fills in as guest host) to break down why “Creep” is sneakily an empowerment anthem, the impact of the song's unforgettable music video, and how TLC’s look and sound evolved on their second album, "CrazySexyCool." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But the 90s is back. And part of that is because of TLC and what they represented and the looks that they had in these videos that we can remember to this day. Absolutely. I've tried to embrace the 90s coming back. I wear like the big clunky, the big clunky sort of like white Reeboks that like people do. Unfortunately, because I'm my age, people are just like, oh, he hasn't changed. Like it doesn't come across as retro. And I'm like, come on, y'all.

Come on, young people. I'm one of you. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I am media personality, author, and podcaster, Rachel Lindsay. And this is what's a, whoa, whoa, wait, what was that? Luxury, you look different. I don't know what's going on. You are a master of disguise, my friend.

Wait, okay, listen. We don't want to freak everybody out. Let me explain. Tell him quick. Luxury is not here right now. He is on hiatus for this episode, working. on his upcoming book, How to Steal Music. It's going to be a great book.

We can't wait to read it. We didn't want him to go on IAS. He did it anyway. But listen, Rachel is filling in to keep things going. Luxury and I know she is a dear friend of the show, and she hosts an awesome podcast with Van Lathen called Higher Learning. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you here. And seriously, like, you know, luxury and I, we couldn't be more excited to have you here because you are also, like us, a music nerd, a music fan. And a big fan of the song that we're going to do today. Oh, I'm a huge fan of the song. I'm even in character as we speak. Before we even get into today's song, I just want to point out, and this is mainly for the people watching us on YouTube.

If you don't already do it, you can watch our episodes on YouTube. Go to that YouTube channel, subscribe to it. A little extra bonus for people getting the visual. I am wearing an Atlanta Dream Team Olympics 96 jacket. Check it out. Oh, I didn't even see the back of your jacket. Oh, yeah. I am repping hard for my home team.

of Atlanta, Georgia, Olympics 96, and you are wearing pajamas. Okay, let's be clear. Pajama, it looks like pajamas. No. But, you know, this is very in style also right now, but it's on theme for this podcast. First off, ath leisure after the pandemic, we all do it. But these are in reference to a very specific song. And the second you walked in, I was like, yes, fellow music nerd, welcome to the show.

Rachel, today's song of which your pajamas allude. was a huge mega R&B hit by the best-selling American girl group of all time. That's right, the best-selling American girl group of all time. Not the Supremes. Not the Mary Jane girls. Not Danny D.C. Sorry, Aubrey. Not even Destiny's Child.

No. Destiny's Child, apparently a couple of million albums short of this group's record. I couldn't believe it. No, honestly, I would have said the Supremes. That's the group that I thought it was. But this song topped the Billboard Hot 100 Charmed. for four consecutive weeks in 1994. Wow.

And it won this group, their first Grammy, for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals. That's right. We're talking about TLC, and the song is Creep. All right, Rachel, look, we both know Creep was part of the soundtrack to the 90s, your childhood, my teen years. There's a little bit of an age difference here, you guys. We still put it on our party playlist to this day.

Can I just say, when you hear the whole. horns and you start to feel something, you start to get in formation. That's what it is. Formation before it was formation. You start to move a little bit, you know, you start to hop into that choreography, which we'll get into. We're going to talk about those horns. Creep, what does it mean? I have to speak to, when I was nine years old when this came out, childhood years for me. I was a little over nine. Go ahead. Just a dad. When I was nine, creep, I don't think I understand, I definitely didn't understand it in the context of the song. So creep was like a disgusting, pervert person.

It was creepy, yeah. Yeah, that's what it meant to me. Now, as an adult, I'm going to have a little bit of a controversial take. Creep in the sense of this song is a little bit empowering. No, I can't wait to hear your hot take on creep as just a subject. But I want to talk a little bit about my personal connection with the song. My first job in the entertainment business was I was an intern at LaFace Records. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, people who've listened to the show know that my father did some artwork for a LaFace compilation, and they didn't pay him. And as he struggled to get paid for his work, eventually he just said, being the caring father he was, he was like, hey, look, I've been fighting with you guys for months to try and get paid for this thing. My son wants to work in the record business. Wow. What if you just let him come down and see how the record business works? And they did. They let me come to an unpaid, by the way, unpaid. But worth it.

But look, I mean, it was my very first job in this business of entertainment, you know, and I landed right about the time that TLC was blown up big. You know, this is like the summer of 95, you know, crazy, sexy cool is out there. And I'm witnessing all of this, you know, change in like the Atlanta scene. Yeah. Thanks to Outcast, thanks to, thanks honestly to Usher, thanks to TLC. All these are LaFace artists. LaFace was changing things.

And by the way, So So Def was huge at this time, too. Jermaine-a-Priot had his big effect. We're going to get into Jermaine and Dallas-Austin and organized noise. But, yeah, also, let's just be honest, Chile went to my high school. She did? Oh, yeah. That was, like, big, like, people would be in class like, yo, Chile used to sit right here. Were y'all close in age?

No, no, no, she was older than me. She was older than me. You got excited about saying that. No, it's funny you bring it up because I do feel like sometimes I slipped in between generations. I'm older than you. I'm younger than chili. Okay, okay. Fair.

But, you know, Atlanta was a special place because we had jelly beans, which was like our local roller skating rink. And jelly beans was like where everybody met everybody. Like I was too young to be a part of like the scene that produced Dallas Austin and Germain DePrie. But like they all met there and I can I can still see jelly beans in my head. Can I ask you? Because I'm from Dallas. And we didn't have what Atlanta has now. You look back on the time that you're talking about with Atlanta.

And it's, I'm wondering if you knew how. iconic this was. Did you know you were a part of something special? Because I look at Los Angeles like that. I look at New York like that in Atlanta. In Dallas, we didn't have that. Atlanta was a scene on a come of. At that time in the early 90s, we were still sort of like the best kept secret. Yeah. I always laugh at the fact that like both Minnesota Society and Boys in the Hood both end with like one character, usually the smart character who's like, yeah, I got to get out of LA. I'm going to Atlanta. Like they both in with the character that you're rooting for going. going to Atlanta.

And I think that we knew that it was special, but I don't think that we knew, look, the Olympics were on the way. We were kind of gearing up for that. But, you know, like, there was, like, this vibe of, like, we don't need anybody else. Atlanta's cool. Like, we can do everything right here in Atlanta. I mean, that was evident from Andre's speech at the Source Awards. South got something to say.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think anybody was really checking for us. Like, I remember Atlanta before we had our own scene, so to speak. We were basically, like, Miami North. We would go to dances and all we would do is dance to booty shake for three hours straight. And it was great. Like, don't get me wrong.

I still think that, like, the first time I went to a party up north and, like, they were trying to play, like, Biggie and Two Pocket parties. I was like, this okay, but there's nothing like listening to, like, Splackpack and Gucci crew and, like, all that stuff that, like, you know, you can't listen to now. Like, it actually makes today's music seem clean. But, like, that stuff, it was special. What were you like when Creep came out? Well, I was on the playground when Creep came out.

But it's interesting because I grew up in a very strict household where there was so much that I couldn't listen to. You know, if the CD had an E on it, it was out. My sister, my older sister used to try to sneak and listen to CDs. And so I would get little bits and pieces here and there. But I couldn't listen to that. Oh, wow. But I could listen to TLC, which now when I go back. As long as the singer has a condom in her glasses, it's okay.

You can listen to that. They were not looking at that. They thought, here are three girls who are fully dressed and, you know, just singing upbeat songs. Like the first album they had was way more upbeat. But that crazy, sexy, cool was sexy. And even at nine years old, I knew that there was something different. I remember, I'm going back to the first album.

Yeah. I remember singing Baby, Baby, Baby. Yes. On the playground, it was who are you in TLC? Everybody was like, are you T-Baws? Are you chilly? Are you left-eye? I was always left-eye.

Because I just loved her free spirit. But we would fight over that. We were that girl group on the playground. And I remember we were singing baby, baby, baby. And when we would get to that sexuality song, I mean, the part lyric in song, I was like, oh, we can't say that. We can't say that. Because I was like, no, no, no.

my, like, a church, you know, I was a church girl. We weren't allowed to do all that. We're allowed to sing that part. But still, but despite all of that, TLC was so influential in my life. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be their friends. There was this lightness, this free spirit, as I was talking about when it came to left eye. Every person in the friend group could match up to one of them.

And you wanted to be just like them. And I feel like each generation has that girl group. For me at nine years old, it was definitely TLC. That's so deep. I think with my age group, everybody had to be. be a member of another bad creation. It was just like, are you... Those were our boyfriends.

Are you the short one or the tall one? We don't even know. We're going to take a step back and just talk about the history of TLC. There's so much fascinating stuff going on in this history. And some of it did not make the 2013 biopic crazy sexy cool. Did you happen to see that one? Oh, you know I did. I want to know your thoughts on that right off the bat.

What did you think of that bio? I thought it was so good. Because you always get nervous when they're going to, you know, it's a biography. And it was like, who were they going to cast? I thought the casting was perfect. It took me back, right? And I think that that's important when you're watching a movie like that. It was Kiki who played...

Kiki played Chili. Yeah. Drew Sador was T-Bos. And Lo Mama was Left Eye. I think a lot of people liked it. I think the only thing that you can say against is that some people say that's not quite how I went down. So, take a step back.

Let's talk about TLC. They start off as TLC, which stands for T-Baz, Left Eye, and Crystal. Who? Exactly. Crystal Jones was originally sort of like the lead singer in the group. And that's why they were TLC. They were managed by Pebbles, who was then the wife of LaFace co-founder, L.A. Reed. And she was like, I think this group is great.

At some point, though, she presented them with a contract. And here's where people have different stories. According to some, it was when she presented them with a contract that Crystal Jones had some issues with it. We're going to hear more about this contract later in the show when TLC says, hey, we've sold a lot of records and we're broke. According to Crystal, she's like, I had big issues with this contract. When I expressed that to Pebbles, Pebbles slowly pushed me out of the group. There are others who say, well, they felt like, you know, there was not enough chemistry between Crystal and the other two. And so that was the reason why.

And there was also some allegations about Crystal not being a good singer. Having done some research, I don't know if anybody really believes that. I think it was probably more of a chemistry thing. But at some point, Crystal finds herself out of the group. It sounds like Left Eye and Tebaugh's Winter, and they were like, hey, I think we're going to continue TLC without you. Now, what's interesting about that is that they kept the TLC name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at some point, LaFace Records, which was the record label founded by L.A. Reed and Babyface Edmonds,

they bring in a backup dancer from another LaFace artist. And that backup dancer's name is Rizanda Thomas. And they were like, look, Resonda can sing, she can dance, she's fun. And when they put the three together, it seemed like they had a lot of chemistry. Sure. But now, TLR, I don't know if TLR is a hit group. Nope. You know, and Rizanda, even though, you know, she pretty much owns the name Rizanda,

they were like, we got to give you a nickname that starts with a C so we can keep this amazing name for the group. And it was actually left eye who was like, okay, I think your nickname can be chilly. Can I say this? Can you imagine being Crystal Jones? I'm sorry. Those interviews are out there. She has definitely granted the interviews.

And, you know, she seems sad. Like, she should be. Listen, she is what Pete Bess and Stu Sutcliffe are to the Beatles. She is to TLC because it was, TLC was sort of like her brainchild. Right. I've seen many places, stated in many places that she was sort of like the leader. And then this thing that she sort of came up with becomes this mega huge hit, you know, recording act. And she's not there to experience it.

And to hear Crystal tell it, I believe it was left eye who reached out to her, you know, later and was like, look, I agree it sucks to be kicked out of, you know, the group, you know. But I will actually say one thing in defense of LaFace and Pebbles, not that they need it. You know, I would say that one of the great appeals of TLC is the friendship. Like, you know, like there were groups, SWV total. There are a lot of groups that come out, a lot of girl groups specifically that come out in the 90s. but TLC, and maybe this is my Atlanta bias, TLC felt like those girls that you knew. And it seemed like they were legitimate friends. And, you know, like T-Maz and Chile are great singers, left-ey-s a great rapper,

but more than just, you know, their abilities in front of the mic, they had that unknown thing. They had that intangible quality that made the group greater than the sum of its parts. You believed it, which is why they're still together to this day. You know, obviously we know, left-eyes not here anymore, but they're still close. That camaraderie is still there. Absolutely.

I just feel bad because I said, who? When you said Crystal Jones and to think that you were there at the beginning and then this is where you are now, it reminds me of that scene from the Temptations movie. Owl, when they replaced them with David Ruffin. It's like, where's Al? It's one of those cruel facts about the entertainment industry that sometimes you come upon a formula that works and sometimes that format doesn't include everybody. Yeah, yeah.

And that's really tough. By the way, one more super fun fact about the name TLC, they weren't even the first group to really latch on to the name TLC, but they were the first to blow up with it. There was another group in New York that we all know that had the name TLC made up of Taj, Lili, and Coco. That's right. SWV's original name is TLC. And when TLC blew up, sisters with voices, they were like, hey, we need a new name.

The key to success, it seems like, was having those three letters. I don't know what they... It worked. TLC was... They were even like, let's name a channel. TLC, like, TLC just works, apparently. Tener-loving care, no, it should have been Tage, Lili, and Coco. But no, instead it turned out to be Tiv's left eye and chili.

Apparently, left-eye nicknamed her chili because she said she brought the sauce. And that's something they actually mentioned in their very first song that I heard from them. On the first album, ooh, on the TLC tip, here's a little clip of that song. This is, ain't too proud to beg. It's hard to cut that song off. Like, that is just, I'm sorry, that is infectious. I'm glad you said it. I could have listened to the whole song.

By the way, we talked on an earlier episode, like, that bomb squad sounds like, you could almost argue that, like, left eye, her rap style sounds a little bit like, you know, I'm the young girl version of Chuck D. You know, like, you know, even when she rap, she's like, you know, unfortunate and destiny. You know, like, she's got like that really old school Chuck D sound. But, like, that was like, that was what was hitting in 1991, 1992. I'm not going to hear it any other way now.

And I actually wish you had not said that. Chuck D. No, Chuck, left eye. No, seriously, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck D had such a big effect at that time. Sure. Left eye. She was, you know, she's kind of great.

And there you go. She says, T.Baz is a boss. Chili, what's up with that sauce? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, you say Chuck D, but then also. So I think of that time, 92. So I'm thinking, new Jack Swing, you've got R&B.

You got a little bit of pop in there as well in addition to the rap. But that was what made TLC so fun with the titles like, ain't too proud to beg. Baby, baby, baby. What about your friends? Like, we felt like we were all a part of their friendship. They were legitimate friends. And in a pre-spice girls kind of way, this was a group that was bonding over the friendship. You know what I mean?

And can I at, I was seven when the first out. album came out. I'm not, I promise you I'm not trying to do that. But it's bringing back memories as I'm listening to this music. And I went to a predominantly white school. So what TLC did, it was crossing over. So it was represented, like we, the few black girls that were in my class, we could be TLC.

And our white counterparts thought it was cool too. They were singing along too. So that's also what I think about when I think of TLC, about the representation that they had and the crossover appeal. That's amazing. because I will say this is the best kind of crossover because, you know, when I was in school, I never thought a TLC as crossover. To me, it felt like, oh, Atlanta's on the map.

Like, I actually feel like TLC had as much impact on, like, sort of like, spreading, like, Atlanta culture and, like, Atlanta vibes as Alcast, which is crazy. Because now Alcass is sort of seen as, like, this, you know, this thing that took over the whole world. But if you, if I could put us all into a time machine and take a. back to that time, I'm telling you, there was something so uniquely Atlanta about TLC's vibes in general. You know, I remember the first time I saw their video for Slay Ride, their Christmas song, which is my second favorite Christmas song of all time.

That video just made me feel like I was in Atlanta no matter where I was. You know, it just felt like, oh, these are the cool Atlanta girls that, you know, I wish I was at the sleepover with, you know? That perspective is so interesting because I'm not from Atlanta, so I couldn't relate it to Atlanta. They were just the cool girls. They were just the cool girls. I didn't know that they were just, you know, being Atlanta. I just thought these are three friends who are having such a good time that seemed like they can do it all. They're so cool. I want to be them. These girls did represent the Atlanta scene in a unique way. We had Teabas. She was the girl from around the way.

She was a tomboy. We had Chili, who was an amazing dancer. I feel like everybody in Atlanta could kind of dance. And then we had Left Eye who just, you know, she was like the rapper slash the one with the condom in the glasses. I remember even thinking, like, Like, you know, it's funny as a dude to hear her line, two inches or a yard, rock hard, or with his sag in, which your parents definitely didn't know about. Didn't know what that meant. Didn't even know that was a condom in her sunglasses or her glasses. Okay? This is how naive I was.

It's like, that's creative. She's got a balloon up there. What is that? Why does she blow the balloon up, though? What is she thinking? But, you know, the other thing that was special about TLC is I think along with in vogue, they really did pave the way for everybody from SWV to total. I mean, like, if you think about the 80s,

like maybe with the exception of Vanity 6 and the Mary Jane girls, like there aren't a lot of girl groups in the 80s. And yet in the 90s there's an explosion. You know, like there's so many. I mean, we're not even talking about changing faces, 702, cut close. Brownstone. Brownstone, allure. By the end of the decade, we have Destiny's Child.

But there's so many, Bokinstein. I mean, can you, I mean, people don't realize between Escape and Jade and Mokenstaff. By the way, Mokenstaff had one of the best songs of the 90s. Yeah, when I think of the 90s, man, women had a moment. Black women, excuse me, had a moment in the 90s. When I think of just the actresses, then you think of the lead singers, then I'm thinking of the groups. We're talking about TLC, but you just mentioned so many of them. I mean, I forgot changing faces.

Yes. Moken stuff. Cut close, like you said. Brownstone, I mean. You could do a whole hour, two hour set of music and just play the R&B girl groups of the 19-nights. And you know what was cool, too, is we were seeing them in pop culture. Like Brownstone was on, you know, they were on Martin. Some of these artists were on fresh prints.

You know what I mean? Like the culture was, it was all interconnected. It was all interconnected. I'm so glad you bring up their appearances on these. on these multi-cam shows on UP and the WB, because if you were looking for black people, you could find us everywhere. Like, I feel like in a way,

even not quite as much now, because, like, between girlfriends and Living Large and, of course, Martin, and all the sort of, like, leftover Fox shows from, like, earlier in the decade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had so many TV shows. We had the movies, everything from poetic justice.

Love Jones. Love Jones. My gosh. Jason's lyric. We just had movies. We had TVs. We had our own. own radio stations. It was insane. And it was a really fun, I do feel like there was something

special about the 90s. There was something special about the 90s. So, ooh, on the TLC tip, sort of explodes onto the scene and with like a million other artists, TV shows, movies, like they sort of announced we're in a new decade and these are some new voices. When crazy, sexy, cool comes out, a couple of things happen. Number one is that we get a more sophisticated TLC, you know. And I don't think it's a mistake that like this album starts off not with you know not with any of them actually but with Andre 3000 with the voice of Andre 3000 talking to Fife Dogg almost like getting a complete hip-hop co-sign like saying like oh yeah those cool girls from Atlanta like yeah they might address like they might address like Chris Cross and and another bad creation on that first album

but like we as a hip-hop community respect them by the way five dogs intro to crazy sexy cool is so classic to me. You've got the Germain DePree beat. Yeah. And you've got what I think is one of the most classic cases of censorship that we all sort of knew what he probably said. I'm just going to play this in it. I mean, it's the lovely T-bars

with the ill-hirt cut, but left-size the die beats. Yeah, you know it's all good, but I heard it was a hood it. It's like that chore. I mean, wonder what he said there. I don't know. Could it be, but I heard Andre Reiser was a hood? which is a great funny lyrics so long as they're getting along.

Well, yeah. But this album came out in November, and in June, something unfortunate happened when his sneakers, I believe, caught fire. Well, that's one way to tell the story. And burned it down. Yeah, there's something that happened there. I remember that, too. Yeah. And sadly, with Left Eye, that was something that followed her until the very end.

It did. It did. I mean, so to the uninitiated, Left Eye and, and, uh, and, and, and, sadly, with her. Atlanta Falcons player, Andre Reisen, were in a tumultuous relationship. And, you know, she got angry at him and set some of his stuff on fire in the house, and the whole house burned down. Right. The whole house burns down.

And she spent a lot of time on probation, a lot of time in court, you know, dealing with that. Some of it when they were trying to finish up this album. So there are songs where there's like no left-eye verse. There's a lot of her not a part of it. She also was in rehab during this time. Yeah, exactly. She was suffering from alcohol. alcohol abuse as well.

Exactly. So, but, you know, I do think that, like, this album sort of like harold's, like, a more sophisticated TLC. And, again, I would argue just as much as Southern Playalistic Cadillac music, which was Outcast's first album, Crazy Sexy Cool was another planting of a flag saying, like, yeah, we've always talked about urban music in terms of, like, New York, obviously, Los Angeles, yes, Detroit, just legacy. but now Atlanta has fully, I would argue, by the mid-90s, we've fully come into our own.

And you get more and more rappers and executives and even labels sort of setting up like their Atlanta office. Yeah. You know, it starts off they're just setting up their Atlanta office. By the 2000s, their primary office is in Atlanta. When I think of this album, I think of Atlanta now, now that I know it better at the time, obviously not. When I think of all the people that were a part of the making of this, I mean, you already just said, Andre 3000, Five Dog, Jermaine Dupree, Dallas Austin. Celo provides vocals on this.

Also a maze high graduate. Actually, the entire Goody Mob went to my high school. I was going to say, because Sleepy Brown is a part of this as well. I mean, there's so much Atlanta influence behind this that, you know, all these people go on to do amazing things. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Crazy Sexy Cool is like if you had like an ideal cipher of like your favorite rappers, like this album Crazy SexyCoo is like a, it's almost like a cipher of some of your favorite. of all time Atlanta producers. And in fact, that's not an accident.

L.A. Reed wanted Dallas Austin to be involved because Dallas had crafted so much of the sound on O'On the TLC tip, their first album. But then he's also like bringing in the organized noise crew, you know, RICO, Ray, Sleepy. He's trying to get them to produce it. He's got Jermaine Dupree who just produced that introlude that we just heard. And I only found this out recently. Apparently, he sort of was using, he was sort of manipulating them a little bit. He was telling Dallas, oh, Germain ain't feeling those new, you know, songs you're doing.

He was telling the organized noise, oh, you know, like Dallas and Germain, they ain't feeling. Like, there's this thought that you get better work out of creative people when you have them on a competitive level. I guess we should say thank you then. I mean, I don't know how they felt about it in the moment, but man, it produced. Well, but here's the thing. When they got together eventually in a couple of years and they were like, hey, man, you know, LA told me you weren't feeling this. He was like, well, L.A. told me you weren't feeling it. And they figured out, oh, he was telling all of us different.

things and then they all figured out because Atlanta was never one of those places that had like big rivalries you know like everybody kind of rooted for everybody else at least until like you know Gucci and Jeezy were shooting at each other but until that time we were all sort of getting along there are so many good songs on crazy sexy cool but we are here to talk about creep the lead single from that sophomore album so after the break we'll get into how creep was made and why TLC's iconic music video still plays rent-free in our heads some 30 years later I can't believe it's been 30 years. I can't either.

I can't believe it's been there. You're old. Well, you remember it. We'll be right back. Welcome back to one song. Okay, Rachel. Now it's time to dive into the meat and bones of creep. Are you ready?

I am. All right. Okay. Let's start from the beginning with those unmistakable horns. I think to this day, there are a few songs that you can bring on where like just a horn plays and everybody's like, oh, you know, like. Exactly. People get up on the dance floor. Yeah.

I'm like, give me a microphone. Where's my camera? Let me step into choreography. You're right. There are not many songs that can do that to you just from. Now, this isn't horns, but it's similar to back that ass up. When it drops, we all go running. Doom, doom, doon, do.

What is that? Is that a cello? I have no idea. But I know what I'm supposed to do when I hear it. And that's exactly how I feel when it starts off. Yeah, those horns really do it for us. By the way, this song is built using a lot of Hey Young World by Slick Rick. Let's hear a little bit of that.

I don't think Slick Rick's importance is really stated enough nowadays. Everybody from Snoop to, I think everybody who's roughly my age, we all heard Slick Rick's album. And like, there's so many samples, so many sampled parts, I should say. There was something about Slick Rick's voice. He's the original guy who did Lottie Dottie. Anytime you hear like, you know what, you know what? Like he's just like he had such an unmistakable voice.

Have you met Slick Rick? Never. I did. What was that like? It was very random. I just have to say this. I'm dying to know. How did you run into Slick Rick?

So, I was at a party in my teen years. That's the best place to meet Slick Rick, by the way. That's not where I met him. I was at the party and a fight broke out. It was a bad fight. I heard Pop Pop. I ran out the back door. Me and my girlfriend, we ran through the parking lot to the lobby of this hotel.

And Slick Rick was inside. I cannot make this up. No, you can't. I said, excuse me, sir. You were running from a fight and ran into Slick Rick. I mean, how many people are walking around with a patch over their eye? I was like, excuse me, sir, are you Slick Rick? I was like 15.

And he's like, again, why was I there? You know? We're a long way from the playground of not knowing, you know, what sexuality. Now I'm wondering, did you run it to Slickory or did you run it to a guy with an eyepatch? I kind of, what did you say? What did Slick Rick say? He had two women with them. Okay.

And I said, excuse me. Excuse me, sir. Are you Slickrick? And what did he say? He's like, yes, I am. And we took a picture, but that was, you know, before, you know, we were keeping them on our phones. Where is that picture now? I would give any. I'm going to ask my friend Premier.

Shout out to Premier. I'm going to ask her for that. But that is how I met Slick Rick. That is crazy. I would die if it turns out it's not Slick. It was just a pimple of the eye patch. 100%. No, people weren't dressed like this in Dallas.

If I was in Milwaukee, I would get it. But this was Dallas. No, I hear you. I hear you. Oh, my gosh, yes. So, yes, Slick Rick. Very influential. There's so much in that story.

I just want to unpack. I want to unpack who is fighting and why. It was Gramele of a game after party. It was Slickrick that close to a teenage party. It wasn't. I wasn't supposed to be there. It was an after party for the Grandin' Prey Review game. By the way, Slick has a song called A Teenage Love.

Well. That didn't age well. But here's a quote about creep from a 22 Stereogum article. It says, Dallas Austin built the beat from a lonely looped up trumpet blast and the lopping beat from Slick Rick's 1988 single, Hey Young World. Also, I think that when Dallas Austin went on Questlo's podcast, shout out to Questlove and Fonte. Dallas Austin said he couldn't find a symbol crash he liked. So he added the horns based on what he heard Pete Rock and other folks using in their songs.

And I think that's really interesting because, you know, like if the 80s was all about like the 808 and that sort of. of like clavinet sound. And you know, like the 2000s, you could argue, was like Kanye just plays and the Neptunes. The 90s really was all about sampling jazz. Like it was all about like those like baselines and the horns. So it makes sense that he was like listening to what was popular in hip hop just as he had on who on the TLC tip.

And he was like, well, what's happening hip hop right now? Oh, people are like playing those horns. Let's play a little bit of they reminisce over you. And those horns are getting people, so I'm going to do horns on this song. Yeah, yeah. As crazy is that we love the horns now. Yeah. But apparently L.A. Reed was not crazy about it.

And, you know, they were going back and forth about, you know, whether Crips should be the first single. It was apparently Clive Davis who convinced L.A. Reed, hey, the horns are cool. In fact, Clive Davis calls Dallas Austin and says, hey, that Miles Davis horn sound you got on the song is going to get you a Grammy. Wow. And he was right. And he was right. Clive Davis, man, I don't know what, I don't know how much he got for his soul,

but the devil gave him some mighty strong powers. So let's talk about the lyrics. Dallas Austin wrote and produced this song. It starts off with Teabba said, yeah, it's me again. Which I always love because it's like, it's so much confidence. Yes. You know, like this could be the sophomore slump. Not everybody who had a strong album in the early 90s came back with a

greater second album. I want to call anybody out, and I won't. I really want to. I really want to. But it'll only come back to haunt me, so I won't. Not everybody has a good second album. The sophomore slump is real, but not with TLC. Yeah.

It's like she was saying, I know something y'all doesn't know. She's like, I got a good album for y'all. And she was right. And she was right. These lyrics were about Tia Boss's experience with infidelity, a relationship at peril. Rumor Mill says that they might have been about who Chili was sleeping with at the time. Really?

Because I was going to say, rumor mill says that it's possibly Dalvin de Grey from Jodacy. Yes. Well, that's who... T-Bos. That's what T-Baws was,

because they were touring together. Can you imagine going to that tour? Ugh. They were touring together. Forever, my lady tour was wild. You were there? No. I'm not that old, guys.

I wasn't trying to be rude. She's like, tell me about Louis Armstrong. Was Satchmo that crazy? I don't know Cole Porter. Let me just put it like that. No, but I imagine. I imagine that forever my lady tour was probably pretty fun.

Okay, okay. I'm sure it was. For all good reasons and bad reasons. But yeah, you know, Tebas dated Mr. Dalvin. Yes. Apparently they were on tour together. They had an off and on relationship. So it's rumored that she was either cheating on him.

or that he was the other person that she was cheating. Because apparently, this is told from her perspective. Dallas Austin Wright, wrote this based on her experience. And she, her man was not treating her correctly. And so she decided to cheat on him with a friend of his. So I'm glad that you bring this up because there's no way to talk about creep without talking about the ethics of creepy. Like, is creeping ever okay?

You know? what is your take on that? This song makes it okay. This song makes it okay. And I would like to explain myself. Before you judge me, don't attribute this to anything personal in my life. Definitely not the one song podcast. I am speaking in the context of the song.

I appreciate your bravery. When you think about songs about cheating, how many of them are from the women's perspective? Oh, good point. Not many, right? I mean, we can't do it to a number. The first one that comes to mind is My Little Secret, which came out after this, which I could argue this inspired that song. Let's play a little bit of that.

Now, when you say cheating for the woman's perspective, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, what I think you're saying is like, it's usually like, there are plenty of songs where like the woman's mad that he's cheating. Right. But there are far fewer songs where it's like, yeah, I'm cheating on that man. Right, right. The man, you either get the songs where the man's talking about cheating or the woman's talking about what she went through because the man cheated on her.

Totally. So to me, this is. the women taking that back. Constantly, you're seeing it the other way around. And that's why I said at the beginning of this podcast that it feels a little bit empowering. And that's why I think she comes in with this confidence of, hey, you've always heard it one way.

Listen, I love my man. I'll hold him down. But I need a little affection too. So I creep. And by the way, she doesn't even want to break up with her, man, because that she famously says, you know, I choose to keep him protected. Yeah, yeah.

You know, if he only knew the things I did. He couldn't handle it. And he couldn't. He couldn't handle it. By the way, I might be, I might come down on the left eye side of this. Oh, okay. Because, you know, apparently, like, left eye hated this song. She refused to sing it.

I didn't realize this at the time. Yeah. I mean, I realized, obviously, there was no left eye verse in the song. But going back and looking at the video, she doesn't lip sync the chorus. She doesn't lip sync. She doesn't even lip sync the ad libs. Like that one line in there with, like, Chili's like, whoof, you know. when she was funny at me at the time.

I was like, oh, I get it, the dog reference. But Left Eye was just, apparently, she was really not into this song. And she was just like, why don't we just tell the woman to leave? Yeah. And that's a little about how I feel. I feel like, why cheat back when you can just leave? It's called Revenge. Okay.

And I'm for it in this song. Just the different, it was fun. I honestly thought Left Eye wasn't singing in this video because she was just having a good time. Or she might have been caught up in court or something. Like, she wasn't always like on every song. Like, I feel like left eye. Like, she was like, oh, I've got a verse for this song, but maybe not that song. Yeah.

But this was not one that she, and she's not, again, she's not, she's not once lip sinks in the entire video. She's on the remix. She's on the remix, which is interesting because on the remix on a song about creeping and, you know, doing, she's literally saying, oh, by the way, creeping destroys marriages. It destroys partnerships. It spreads STDs. And you really.

shouldn't be doing this thing that we're singing about, you should be. She's absolutely not wrong, but think of, I don't know, it just represents something. You can't really point to many songs that are successful and have this type of message. Absolutely. And I will really point out, like, and there are a few. Maybe we can compile a playlist one time. I feel like every now and then you'll get a song where the rap verse goes diametrically against what the song is about. Okay.

I'm thinking about Acon, don't drink, don't smoke. That's why he won't find me at the bar, baby. I'm like, well, you just under, the whole song is called Bartender. So A. Con didn't get the assignment. Or he was decidedly against the assignment. He was like, bartender, I'm going to sing about the opposite. I never put that together. I was like, there's some other ones.

There's some other ones. I'm like, you just rap the opposite of what this is all about. T-Bives as the lead singer, you know, this song marks a shift from the first album where Chile would often come in and sing the bridge. This song is basically all T-Vy's as lead the whole way through. Because of her voice, right? She's sultry, sexy, cool, not to still the title of the album. Yeah.

And that's necessary for this song and a lot of the songs. For the, you know, the image, the theme of the album, it made a lot of sense. could not imagine Chili's voice on this song. Up until you just said that, it didn't occur to me. I remember when this song came out, we thought the time of crazy, sexy, cool was one word to describe each member. Like, that I was crazy, Chili was sexy, and Teabaz was just cool. We did too.

But now I think that it is truly very similar to the themes of the recently released Inside Out too. We are all these things. We all have a crazy side. We all have a sexy side. We all have a cool side. And I know the psychologist lists here, like, we don't know. use the crazy word anymore. Okay, it's fine. But yes, I think at the time when this came out in

1994, there was a sense that like, oh, each one represents a word. No, they were all those things together. Yeah. That crazy part probably did not help the reputation that left eye had. Because I thought the same thing as you. I thought they all represented one of these, you know, adjectives. No, I'm sure that when she was standing up at court, she was probably like, couldn't we call it like perfectly, perfectly legit, sexy cool? I want to give you a comment. moment here, Rachel. I consider you very cool. Thank you. And to me, you are the T-Bos in this group. What are your impressions of T-Bos just as a person and also as a singer? I had never heard a voice like T-Baz's until T-L-C. And, you know, there was something

captivating about her voice that would just completely draw you in. And I think because it's some of those words that I used before, she is sultry. She is sexy, confident. And there was an ease about her, a calmness too. There's so many things that her voice captured that I think just makes her stand out. And to this day, I don't know if I've heard anybody that sounds like T-Bahs. And then when you watch her in the video and you watch the way that she moves, she's just so smooth with everything that this is why it made it hard to choose who you wanted to be in that group. Because T-Boss was a standout.

And for me, I was a tomboy at the time. So I liked the energy that she brought as well. They all kind of did, which is another thing. I mean, you could look at this so many different ways. They didn't dress like they thought they had to to show their assets or anything. They wore baggy clothes. No, but you know. Yeah, everything was just free.

So I think this is a perfect opportunity to bring up the music video because you've said two things. You said she was smooth and I can't think about her being smooth without thinking about some of those moves in particular. Yep, exactly. And also you bring up, they weren't scantily clad, which apparently they shot three videos for creep. And various forces were trying to get them to do it like in lingerie or to act out a storyline music video where they were actually out there creeping. They eventually ended up with the version that we know. And listen, we hear at the show, we often joke that we use the word iconic too much. But it's just the nature of the stuff we're talking about.

It's hard to find another word other than iconic. to describe this choreography. What I see in this video, I love it because, like, you see them at rehearsal, just having fun. Yeah. And then you see them in the playful pajamas. You know what I mean? And I think that that goes towards your point. Like, you know, granted, when I found out there was a version of the thing where, like, I guess Teabaz and the other ones are like in lingerie.

Like, you know, I turned back into 15-year-old me and I was just like, oh, man, we missed out. But I'm going to retract that and say, like, it works better. because girls can get into it. It's like, trust me, the pajamas are super sexy, but it's also like more playful, it's more fun. But it is sexy. And it's totally sexy. And it's totally sexy.

You know, they're buttoned up. There's a little skin. They're all their stomachs are showing. They got abs on abs on abs, by the way. Go back and look at the video. There's a lot of stomach in this video. Yeah. And you can see them having fun.

Like, you know, clearly the stuff that's shot in black and white is the past, so to speak. And that's where they're just having fun. B and TLC. That's where you see a lot of left eyes. personality come out. And then you cut to the color stuff and yeah, you know, they're singing the song. But that music video did a lot for this song. Okay, so we talk about sleepovers on this podcast, but this, it's not just the pajamas, but this was the song that you played. You remember the box? Of course. Okay. Love the box. Oh, how many times I called my parents at work and I say,

can I please order this video? Can I please order this one? This is the video that we were ordering. This, we were dressed up, even if we didn't have the silk pajamas. You know, we were trying to have fun like they were. This is once again where we're naming who we are. Just, we wanted to be one of the girls. We wanted to be one of TLC. I just, I can remember this like it's yesterday. If you don't think that I'm going home tonight and calling two more my girlfriends to do this,

you don't know me. They all had such distinct personalities. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the way, I think the 90s was like peak short haircut. time for girls like between Hallie, Tony, Anita. We should bring everything else is coming back from the 90s. And there's a reason, right? Because to use the word, iconic moments from the 90s like these.

Maybe we should bring the short hair back too. I totally agree. Just one more thing about the video and the dancing in the video. I also think it's very reflective of where Atlanta was dance-wise. Like whether we were dancing to Kilo, nasty dancer, my boo by Ghost Town DJs. Like, we were ykeing it up. And this is a, this is where I want to plant my own. What is the yeek?

Yeek. So, like, nowadays people talk about yeat as like a thing from a couple of years ago or there's a rapper name Yeat. But Yeek, Y-E-E-K, with a K at the end. I'm planting my flag, y'all, because we had a dance where you had to yik it up. Or every time you would do it, people would be like, yeek. And, like, it was such a fun dance. We usually did it to fast songs and, like, you know, Miami Booty Shake songs.

But, like, in this video, in the creep video, They're basically doing a slowed down version at one point of a dance that could have easily been a geek dance. Like that sort of slide to the side thing. I got to see it. We'll go back and show it. No, you can show me. Oh, right now? I'm just kidding.

I might need some booty shake in the studio. We're not that kind of podcast, though. But I just think one more example of how they bring Atlanta everywhere. And they just slowed it down to the BPM of Crete. But, like, we saw what they were doing. We were like, ah, they try to yke it up. Look at them. TLC also saw the What a Man video for Sawton Pepper.

I mean, What a Man was such a huge song for Salt and Pepper. And they were like, we want that director. So Matthew Ralston, the director of that video, came over and shot the third version of Creep, the music video, but that was the version of Creep that we all got to know. It's so weird to hear what almost wasn't. I know. I can't imagine this video any other way. And I wonder if it would have had the same influence.

I wonder if this video helped take the song to another level. I would imagine that it did. because it is so something like we hadn't seen before. It's just a great video. Yeah. In some ways it reminds me of the same sort of like cozy casualness. Like it shows you a side of the artist the same way that that's the way love goes by Jana Jackson.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like that was another one where it was like, oh, they're letting me into like their friend's circle and this is what it would be like to kick it with them for that night. The other thing that's really interesting by the song is that when they get to the stacking harmonies on, I keep giving him love until the day he pushes me away. I always figured that was Chilly doing some harmonizing with T-Bas. It's actually Deborah Killings, who was one of these people who's on a lot of LaFace recordings.

She's down with Organized Noise and Dengen Family. And so that's actually her. There's no chili. So this song is really just T-Baz, you know, in terms of like the T-L-C of it. I wonder why they didn't use chili. The only thing I can think of is this is really based off of T-Baz's story. So it's very personal to her. So it makes sense for her to just own the song.

I don't know if we should even say it. There were also rumors that Chile might have fooled around with L.A. Reed at the time. And so she might have had her own creep situation going on. But that is pure hearsay. We obviously have no evidence of that. The point is, we all creep from time to time. Said my co-host. I am happily married.

No, people creep. My point is that people creep. People creep. People creep all the time. When I say everyone creeps, I mean, it's not gender-specific. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Women are players, too.

That's right. Some would say they do it better. So this song comes out. It wins them a Grammy. It's their first number one. They actually have an even bigger song off of the same album, the quite famous Waterfalls

produced by organized noise. This album keeps producing hits. It goes on to sell 12 million copies, and yet, apparently, the group is broke. 10 million albums worldwide. We have worked very hard. We have been this business for five years. And we are broke as broke can be.

I did not know they set that speech on stage. That's wild. That's really that. That's desperate. Throwing down the gauntlet. Yeah, you can't imagine somebody saying something like that now because people would be like, oh, you know, like people would probably not show them the sympathy that they deserved. But to go back to that, you know, the contract that they signed with Pebbles, you know,

it was a contract that had some flaws. It's wild to me that they said that on the Grammy stage. And yet I'm so sad for them at the same time. They have to feel completely desperate to get up there and say it. Because you know they had a happy conversation. Right. This is a moment where they're winning their first Grammy. It's a night of celebration.

It's a night to celebrate all the accomplishments that they've had and the hard work that they've done. And then they have to say this on stage because it's like the dark cloud that's hovering over what's really going on behind the scenes. So that was some real talk. And that's like, you know, to me, to this day, I think people you need to understand it, like, you know, a lot of time your favorite entertainers not making the money that you think they are or that they deserve. But here's some good news.

After Crazy, Sexy Cool, they had the huge, huge, huge success of their album fan mail. You know, no scrubs. Right. Unprety. You know, it did definitely help them, you know, sort of, you know, make some of the money that they deserve. But then they had the unfortunate, truly tragic passing of left eye, you know, which I think we all feel that, you know, to this day. You know, it's just one of those deaths. It's like Aaliyah.

It's like Prince. It's just, it's one of those really, you know, things that you just weren't prepared to hear that morning. Yeah. It was definitely a, it was so close to Aaliyah's past. So it just seemed unreal, like, what is happening? Why are these young artists that we look up to who just seem that they're right on the edge of becoming something even bigger? And I feel like left eye and, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, was working on some kind of individual project at the same time. And she seemed to really be finding herself and in a different place and that reputation that we referenced earlier.

So to see her pass away at that moment in her life, in addition to being so young was so tragic. Yeah, I mean, like that that was so sad. But the good news is that they have a legacy that they can be so proud of. You know, they are the best-selling American girl group of all time with over 65 million records sold. They are, to this day, fashion icons. You can't mention T-Boss without talking about that haircut. Right. You're wearing the PJs right now.

In 2024. You know, we know you take fashion seriously. I do. I do. I try. And it's working. But the 90s is back. Part of that is because of TLC and what they represented and the looks that they had in these videos that we can remember to this day.

Absolutely. I've tried to embrace the 90s coming back. I wear like the big clunky, the big clunky sort of like white Reeboks that like people do. Unfortunately, because I'm my age, people are just like, oh, he hasn't changed. It doesn't come across as retro. And I'm like, come on, y'all. Come on, young people. I'm one of you.

But no, seriously, I think to this day that TLC does represent the new Atlanta that emerged in the 90s. And I've said it to people before, and I'll say it again, I think they are just as important to the legacy of Atlanta and to Atlanta's music as Outcast. And it's easy to sort of like overstate what Outcast meant in the 90s and understate what TLC meant in the 90s. They were both doing it together. And it makes sense that so many of them worked on Crazy Sexy Cool, the crossover. shows how intertwined these two groups were. And one more thing about legacy. You can't talk about TLC without the legacy they left for every girl group that came in their wake.

7-02 total. You know, black was founded by... Oh, we didn't name before. Yeah, black was founded by left eye. And, of course, Destiny's Child, which, you know, nothing more to be said about the child. Okay, Rachel, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the one song nation and with each other, since you're our guest today. Why don't you go first?

All right. I am going to, in honor of the theme of creep, this song kind of has similar lyrics to that. And I'm very much so in my era where I'm going back to my roots. Go back to the roots. And I'm from Texas. Cowboy Carter was bringing that back to me. I'm not choosing a song from Cowboy Carter, by the way. I'm going to give you what I think to be a hidden gym. I really love soul full music. But from Texas and my roots are also in northern Louisiana. Oh, there you go. So what we call kind of trail ride music,

juke joint music, think Johnny Taylor. I have a framed look, see, you're looking around. See, this is why this is so good. I'm going to introduce your audience to just a whole new sector. I love it. So I'm going to give you the song. It's by

King George. Okay. And it's called Keep on Rolling. One woman just don't hold me down. One woman just to lift me up. And I got at least have one woman on the side that really don't give up. You know, maybe that's why I'm okay with creep. Because this is the kind of music I was listening to at a young age.

By the way, so I did not see that F-bomb coming. Just smooth. That was crazy. Also, I want to point out this is off of an album called One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, which was also, to bring it full circle, the name of a studio album from The Goody Mob. Which was their album when CELO left. Okay. And I think that was a little bit,

them beat a little shaming. So there is some drama sometimes in Atlanta. There's sometimes some drama if you leave your group. For mine, we talked a lot about a song that Creep sampled, which was Hey Young World by Slick Rick. But that song in turn sampled a lot of other songs, including this one.

So for my one more song, I would offer that people listen to these soul searchers and the name of the song is Ashley's Roachclip and see how many hip-hop samples you can identify in just these very short seconds. And just for shits and giggles, here's the part that's sampled by Hey Young World. So go out and find the soul searchers,

Ashley's Roach Clip. That's always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find me on Instagram or TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. And you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at The Rach Lindsay. And if you made it this far, it means you probably like the podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, and share with someone you think would like it. It really helps

us keep the show growing. Rachel, before we end this thing, tell us one more time about higher learning. Oh, higher learning. My Pride and Joy. Podcasts that I do with Van Laithen, new episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday. You can get us wherever you listen to podcasts. Come on we're talking all things, culture, current affairs, politics, entertainment, sports, you name it. Cowboy hats. Cowboy hats and Dallas Cowboys. And Dallas Cowboys. And shout out to Van Lathen.

He's a great guy. All right, Rachel, thank you so much for coming in today and help me in this thing. I certainly will. One more time, I'm media personality author, podcaster, Rachel Lindsay. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes co-host, Diala Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. Thank you.