CrazySexyCool

The original idea for CrazySexyCool it was simple: Women contain multitudes. The title, a combination of their personalities, was a way to subvert the public's perception of each member: Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins as the “cool”, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas as the “sexy” seductress, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes herself was supposed to be “crazy.” She thought, rightly, that each of them was all of these things at once. Fair enough—and yet some of the album's male producers initially lost the essence of themselves as layered construction. “They were going to do a crazy song for me, a sexy song for Chilli and a cool song for Tionne,” Left Eye said. Pulse in 1994. “We had to explain this CrazySexyCool it doesn't just describe us individually. It describes all the parts of every woman.”

Each member of the Atlanta R&B trio had a distinct role, but the thing was how they all came together. T-Boz was rough and to the point, her jazz-like vocal style focused on tone and overpowering power and clarity. Chilli was the closest to traditional R&B, imbuing their songs with calm-storm. Left Eye was the rebel poet who rapped, sang and thought of many of their musical and visual concepts.

It was Left Eye who suggested the group pin condoms to their clothes and tape them over their own glasses to promote safe sex, a laudable fashion statement that came to define their credentials as artists. As with their predecessors Salt-N-Pepa, none of TLC's messages in their songs, visuals or clothing seemed scripted or telegraphed. Unlike the typical girl group, no member was ever elevated above another. Their individual styles melded seamlessly because they played off each other's strengths, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Their 1992 debut album, Ooooohhhh… to TLC Tip, featured the trio as sexual and independent twenty-something women who allowed themselves to be dumb, inappropriate, and a little messy on their own terms. The critical success and triple platinum sales of this album positioned TLC as role models for younger listeners and pop industry anarchists who pushed the fundamental truth that women have basic physical needs. In the video for “Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg,” they shot water guns and sang about sexual autonomy while wearing bright, baggy jumpsuits and Digital Underground-style bouffant hats, making the case for sexual expression without oppression.

CrazySexyCool was leaner and edgier, smoothing out TLC's approach without losing the gritty spirit of the debut. His songs emphasize not only sex but pleasure in all its many forms. It's a liberating, multi-layered view that suggests that sexy doesn't have to be straightforward or clear-cut only: It can manifest itself in the snaking movement of a saxophone or the way T-Boz whispers, simply, “Yeah, it's me again” on the beginning of “Creep” as if it were foreplay.