The verses and intro are tricked out with bursts of atonal noise that could have stepped off a Public Enemy album, before the whole thing resolves into a sweet pop chorus: an arresting way to introduce yourself. Improbably, the influence of production team the Bomb Squad lurks around TLC’s debut single. I’m Good at Being Bad (1999)Īpparently inspired by Nirvana’s use of dynamics (T-Boz was a fan), I’m Good at Being Bad keeps wrongfooting the listener, slipping from a radio friendly MOR ballad to tough hip-hop and back again, throwing in snatches of Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby and what sounds like a melodic echo of TLC’s own Waterfalls along the way. Diggin’ on You (1994)Ī perfect pop ballad and a perfect lazy summer anthem, Diggin’ on You hits a perfect sweet spot between smoothness – the melody is beautifully turned, T-Boz and Chilli’s vocals creamy – and something tougher, provided by the snapping rhythm track, punchily loud in the mix.
If you’re in search of something tougher, the beat-heavy Left Eye-featuring Remix Rap version is for you. Kept off the top of the US charts by Boyz II Men’s End of the Road – ironically the handiwork of the same producers Babyface, LA Reid and Daryll Simmons – Baby-Baby-Baby is quintessential early 90s pop-R&B.
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An acoustic guitar driven ballad that prickles with distrust and paranoia, plus a hint of the Stylistics in its flickers of electric sitar, it should have been a huge hit. The killer track from the uneven post-Left Eye album 3D reunited T-Boz and Chilli with Austin, the producer they worked with on their debut album. “It’s kinda rock’n’roll,” offered T-Boz about Red Light Special, which perhaps tells you more about the preponderance of guitar solos on it – and the raunchiness of the accompanying video – than the song itself: an ultra-classy, beautifully written slow jam that very nearly topped the US chart.
Its remix, meanwhile, introduced the world to TLC’s fellow Atlanta natives OutKast. What About Your Friends is the early TLC at their most poppy: it’s just a great song, powered by an immense breakbeat (made by combining samples from James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone’s Sing a Simple Song). If the sound is indebted to Destiny’s Child, the insistent catchy chorus makes up for it.
Girl Talk features the most arresting opening line in TLC’s catalogue – “You see, I had this brother who was mad at me / Cos I told my homegirl that he wasn’t packin’” – as well as the equally great diss “thinkin’ you got powers like Austin but you’re more like Mini-Me”.
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