TLC Talks The Making Of Their Debut Album, 'Ooooooohhh...On the TLC Tip' 30 Years Ago
essence.comTLC went into the studio to make their game-changing debut, Ooooooohhh…On the TLC Tip, which came out 30 years ago on February 25, 1992.
The new jill swing classic — a masterful melange of funk (from the T, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins), hip-hop (from the L, the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes) and R&B (from the C, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas) — was one of those albums that came straight outta nowhere, like nothing you’d ever heard (or seen) before.But these three ladies with attitude weren’t even sure what they should sound like yet when they went into the studio. “We didn’t have a vision at first,” says T-Boz, 51, of the album that would eventually go quadruple platinum. “It was more so trying to figure out what we were gonna be once we got in there.”However, they already had their trendsetting style down, and through the process they trusted that the music would be — like the line from their debut single “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” said — “on the TLC tip.” “The one thing I think was apparent was, you know, our style, you know what I mean?” says Chilli, 50. “We had our baggy clothes, like prissy tomboys, and kind of went from there, you know?”Where they went was all the way up with the hit singles “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg,” “Baby-Baby-Baby” and “What About Your Friends” and a murderer’s row of producers, including Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri and Marley Marl.
Not to mention L.A. Reid and Babyface, who just so happened to be the founders of their Atlanta-based label, LaFace Records.
And they had to make every single song count. “Being that it was the first album, we didn’t have, like, the second, third or fourth time to switch out songs. ‘I don’t like this one.’ Whatever we recorded, went on,” says T-Boz.On the TLC Tip was jump-started with.
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