TLC - CrazySexyCool


I've written like 4 or 5 albums reviews that I haven't published because they just aren't that great. Now I know why. I've been chasing waterfalls instead of sticking to the rivers and the lakes that I'm used to.

I absolutely adore TLC, I've loved them from the day the video for What About Your Friends debuted on MTV, dude probably deserved to have Left Eye light his house on fire, but I have no idea if CrazySexyCool is a good album. Life literally cannot proceed until I find out.

Off to a real good start with Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor from A Tribe Called Quest introducing you, especially when your producer/songwriters are Dallas Austin, Puff Daddy, Babyface, and Jermaine Dupri,  there's a Prince song hiding in there somewhere, and Cee-Lo Green, Busta Rhymes, and Andre300 are hanging out. Yeah, I know the artist formerly known as P-Puff McDiddlyDad is canceled for somethingorother, but back in the 90s he didn't suck from a purely musical perspective. As far as I know, everybody else is still cream of the crop.

Oh my CrazySexy goodness, I honestly forgot just how good they were. Songwise this thing is all over the place, but the concept is that they're CrazySexyCool 24/7 and they aren't gonna slow down to let you catch up, so you just have to expect we'll cut the fake people out of our lives, then have sex all night, then worry about HIV, then sing a Prince song, tell a poop joke, and sing 4 more songs after all that.

You see kids, in terms of R&B girl groups in the mid 90s, you had En Vogue and TLC and that was it. It wasn't for lack of wannabes, nobody else was even close. Destiny's Child couldn't hold a candle to TLC in the personality department. It's not just harmony for the sake of harmony, T-Boz is the straight front singer, Chilli the melifluous counterpoint, Left Eye the rapper, and they build songs around the strength of those personalities. Some songs don't need a rap verse, some songs don't need a national anthem fermata-melisma, some songs just need some other famous rapper to reiterate that these girls are CrazySexyCool (all one word at the same time), and you'd be one lucky SOB if one of them was your gurlfriend. 

So yeah, it's better than En Vogue's Funky Divas from 2 years earlier. Maybe not better than the first half of Funky Divas, but as full albums go, definitely the winner.

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