Everybody can name at least one song from famed girl group TLC, and most of us know "Waterfalls" by heart, but after Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes passed away in a car accident in 2002, everything changed for the group, which also includes Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins.
This week, T-Boz hopped on a podcast to speak about how things were changed for TLC after the tragic death of their friend, noting that the music industry effectively turned on them, arguing that there is no way around that fact.
T-Boz says it all happened during a five-to-ten year span, and that one man, L.A. Reid, is responsible for a good portion of their neglect in the business.
"I was talking about a ten-year span, five to ten years, how the industry turned on TLC, which is a fact, after Lisa had died because nobody knew what the state of the group was. Hell, we didn't even know," said T-Boz to Hollywood Unlocked. "I wasn't talking about artists [turning on us], I'm talking about the people that come in with the money, the promoters. The L.A. Reid types."
While she doesn't explain exactly how L.A. Reid wronged her and TLC, promising that she wouldn't expose their drama, she maintains that L.A. didn't stop "rocking with" them because he no longer believed in them but that it was deeper than that.
"It was something personal [with L.A.] which I'll always keep between us, whether I agreed with it or not, he, out of respect, called me. And I'll just leave it at that," said T-Boz. "But the final decision was to not rock with us. But it wasn't because he didn't believe in us. I'll clear that part up. But he did decide to turn his back and keep on going. That's fine. It's business."
She goes on to mention Drake, Nelly, and T.I., who pulled out of the Super Bowl Blitz performance in 2014, saying that them backing out of the show was actually a blessing.
"That turned out great for us," says T-Boz. "God always makes things go exactly how they're supposed to. I'm a believer in that. The show went exactly as it was supposed to and I am happy that they actually didn't show up because it showed that we still have staying power. That we can still rock on stage without the bells and whistles and other people to save us."
What do you think of T-Boz's remarks?