SayItAintTay: Ooooo On the TLC Tip!! : Crazy,Sexy, Cool : The TLC Story

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple months or so, you were more than hype when VH1 announced that they were creating a bio pic based off the lives of the legendary girl group TLC. Twitter was abuzz with opinions and criticism after the release of the cast for the movie. Actress Drew Sidora as the smooth deep voiced Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins award winning speller and quarterback, child star KeKe Palmer as Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, and hip hop’s outcast and longest running joke, Lil Mama as the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez. After months of preparation, and filming, the movie finally premiered on VH1 Tuesday night, and 4.5 million people gathered in front of their TV screens to take a trip down musical memory lane.

While a little over dramatic and a tab bit on the corny side, Crazy Sexy Cool, named after the trio’s best selling album, was pretty sweet. The movie detailed the drama and trials of TLC’s rise to fame while telling unknown behind the scenes stories. Here’s a few points that stuck out.

1) Lil Mama is Left Eye

Was anyone else pleasantly creeped out at how much Lil Mama resembled Left Eye? Even though Lil Mama’s lip gloss has dried up and she can’t be taken seriously as a rapper, her portrayal of the late Left Eye put Lil Mama back in the lime light, even if it is for 15 minutes. From her impulsive, hilarious punch lines, to her distinctive tone and voice, Lil Mama was able to embody the sexy swag of Left Eye. What was so amazing about her performance was, unlike her costars Palmer and Sidora, who had the real T-Boz and Chili to draw inspiration from, Lil Mama was able to accurately perform Left Eye’s personality and mannerisms without the direction of Left Eye. Either she watched the Left Eye documentary one hundred too many times, or the spirit of Lopez descended from the heavens and took the body of the 5 ft tall rapper. Either way, it melted your heart a little to see Left Eye back on our TV screens. Her performance got me so much into the movie that I forgot about her untimely death at the end. Her performance was so good, it almost made everyone forgive her for her awkward,” hip hop holy ghost “disruption of Jay Z and Alicia Keys’ performance at the 2009 VMA’s. Almost.


It was times in the movie where she looked so much like Left Eye , it was scary.

Lil Mama did her thing in the movie but I don't think she will ever be publicly forgiven for storming the stage and ruining a legendary Jay Z performance.

2) Damn Pebbles is shady

LOL

Because the bio pic was mainly written around the point of views of T-Boz and Chili, the portrayals of certain main characters in the movie may have pissed some people off, specifically former TLC founder and manager Peri “Pebbles” Reid. (or that chick Crystal that was the girl in the TLC before Chilli. They did her wrong) While LA Reid’s ex-wife may or may have not been a money hungry manger in reality, Rochelle Aytes’ portrayal got everybody to hate her and blow her twitter up with memes and insults. According to the story of T-Boz and Chilli, Pebbles founded and nurtured the girls into stars, while locking the young ambitious girls into a slave contract that robbed them of their royalties and profits forcing the platinum selling artist into bankruptcy. The real Pebbles Reid, not surprisingly, wasn’t too happy about the allegations of her being a greedy, money hungry thief and responded via twitter after T-Boz’s promotional interview with The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1.

Pebbles was NOT happy about her portrayal in the movie, but aye every bio pic has somebody in real life that's mad, which usually means that the story is true. *cough,cough Lil Kim*

Rochelle Aytes and Carl Payne played Pebbles and LA Reid


And of course the social media world had a ball with the memes lol

1 3) Real Dallas Austin vs. Evan Ross as Dallas Austin

Everybody enjoys the actor or actress to resemble the person they are supposed to be portraying in bio pics, it makes them more believable. But there should be an unwritten rule in movies to not have the actor look a MILLION times better than the original person. ATL star, Evan Ross, played the role of producer, Dallas Austin, so well, that it made people do a wikapedia search of his work. (It really blew me that people where claiming to be TLC fans and not know who Dallas Austin was) The ladies watching had their brief, imaginary, love affair with the producer crushed when they realized the real Dallas looked like an older, dustier version of the sexy Evan Ross (Man Crush Monday?). Even though he consistently did Chilli dirty in the movie, in my mind Dallas Austin is Evan Ross sending “500” to my IPhone.

Is it just me or does Evan as Dallas Austin look better than real Dallas Austin?

Or maybe I just like looking at Evan Ross #heyboo


Before Usher,Chilli had had gave her heart to Dallas Austin. He produced a lot of TLC's hits. They have a son together named Tron.

4) TLC is NOT Destiny's Child!!! -_-

Just like any major musical event that doesn’t include Beyonce, the Bey Hive couldn’t let TLC be great for 2 hours without tweeting their Destiny’s Child comparisons. First off, anybody with a decent ear for music would rather compare apples and oranges with a brick wall, before comparing the great DC trio to TLC. Being a TLC fan and a Destiny’s Child fan are not mutually exclusive concepts. But let’s be real, the edginess of TLC can’t hold a candle to the squeaky clean group that Mathew Knowles built. Beyonce would have received 40 lashes for even considering wearing a condom as an accessory, let alone the bare mentioning of sexual intercourse. (I’m talking about red haired Kelly, micro braids Beyonce, Destiny’s Child, not “Sleep in your T-Shirt” Destiny’s Child) And then, the crazy Beyonce stans (not saying I’m not one) couldn’t even get 5 minutes into the damn movie before they started demanding a Destiny’s Child bio pic. -_- Now let me be clear, I probably know all the words to every Destiny’s Child song on every album (including the Christmas album), and I would be the first one in front of a screen if such a movie was made, but let’s be real, a Destiny’s Child bio pic would probably be just as interesting as a WNBA championship game. People would probably die to see Beyonce encountering the undeniable swag of Jay Z for the first time, but that’s it. We would treat it like all of Beyonce’s 50 documentaries of herself, we’d watch it because it’s Beyonce, and then never speak of it again. (Don’t believe me? Who has intentionally watched Life Is But a Dream more than once?....don’t worry I’ll wait)

There wouldn’t be any abortions, or house fires, hell I can’t even picture a decent sex scene that Tina Knowles would approve of. The movie would be boring for the simple fact that the girls of Destiny’s Child actually like each other! You can’t picture Kelly swinging on Bey like T-Boz did Left Eye. The dysfunctional love TLC had for one another was the most compelling part of the movie. Nobody wants to watch Kelly and Michelle smile and hug each other for 2 hours. I’ll scream “All hail Queen Bey” to the roof tops when it comes down to music and performing, but a whole bio pic? Nah, I’d rather use those 2 hours of my life more productively.