TLC’s T-Boz talks partying with Puff Daddy, getting hot with Nelly and making Lady Gaga cry

TLC’s T-Boz talks partying with Puff Daddy, getting hot with Nelly and making Lady Gaga cry. They’re heading our way.

Mikey CahillHit Journalist

4 min read

September 15, 2016 - 7:00AM

News Corp Australia Network

TLC, the sexy and cool, are set to creep over here in November. Picture: Supplied

Music Tours

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R & B nostalgia acts are either great or gross.

The last time Bobby Brown toured here, the crowd winced when he took his top off, missed notes and tried to act the lady-killer he once was. Dude.

Conversely, TLC are still great, they’ve never been lazy and are even finishing a fifth studio album. The empowering and empowered ‘90s R & B superstars hit the heights with No Scrubs, Waterfalls, Unpretty, Crooked Smile, Creep (the origin story shortly), If I Was Your Girlfriend (penned by Prince) and their record CrazySexyCool sold its Stussy pants off (read: 11 million) followed by Fanmail (10 million).

Initially a trio, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas continued on after Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, tragically died in a car-crash in Honduras in 2002.

“Every woman has three sides: crazy, sexy and cool. It’s almost like when Whitney sang I’m Every Woman, they have a side they dominate,” T-Boz explains.

“Lisa dominated Crazy, Chilli dominated Sexy and I dominated Cool,” the 46-year-old adds as her recently adopted one-year-old son Chance scampers around in the background. She has a teenage daughter too, Chase.

Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins (left) and Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas have always resonated style. Picture: AP

T-Boz has beaten a brain tumour, has an ongoing struggle with Sickle Cell Disease and became the spokeswoman for the cause in America. And she’s doing great.

But we’re here to talk about music and TLC’s headline tour with Montell Jordan and, deliciously, the R & B Fridays stadium bill (including Blackstreet, 112 among others). Time to quiz T-Boz on who she’ll be high-fiving on and off the stage.

“Ask me, don’t kill me though,” she says, laughing hard, laughing like it’s still the ‘90s and the world is carefree and people can wear condoms in their sunglasses without fear of becoming a meme. “Don’t kill me!” Nelly. “Oh Nelly, yeah. We did a tour this last summer with him and New Kids On The Block, you forget sometimes when you’re friends with someone how many hits they had. I’m like Oh Nelly, you’re really cool, you’re bigger than I remembered,” she says. Montell Jordan (This Is How We Do It).

“We did a tour with him and Boyz II Men years ago, it’s always cool to come back with your peers and still be doing something you love. Montell was gonna be a basketballer, he’s so tall that every time I see him I think he should still be playing basketball,” she says.

Blu Cantrell (Breathe, Hit ‘Em Up Style). “Blu is on the tour? Wow, she was a labelmate, I love her song (sings) ‘Hit ‘em up styyyyle, duh doooo duh doooo’. I love that she’s still doing her thing,”

Tionne “T-Boz Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas in Sydney in June 2014. Picture: Ross Schultz

Fatman Scoop (Be Faithful). “I remember hearing that song (with Crooklyn Clan) Be Faithful (Put Your Hands Up) at a party, y’know who gives the best parties? Puffy or P. Diddy or whatever he calls himself these days (laughs). I believe it was at one of his parties. Everybody was on the dancefloor having a great time.”

Dante Thomas (Miss California)? “Don’t kill me but I don’t know who that is.” Neither do I. “Oh now I’m putting you on the spot. I didn’t know Nelly was gonna be on the show. I can tell you that Hot In Herre is my jam, he ends the show with that, when he (sings) ‘Oh’ and the beat comes in, everybody loses it. It’s so awesome,” she says, Chance grabbing at the phone.

Creep is another song that triggers Blue Light Disco memories as soon as the blunted trumpet breezes under the doorstep. Thematically, it’s the opposite of Fatman Scoop’s loyal smash. “That song Creep was about an incident that actually happened to me. We thought it’d be funny to make fun of me and I told the band ‘I don’t think people are gonna think this is funny.’ I had a boyfriend that wasn’t acting right and I was like, well forget you, I’m gonna pass to somebody else because he’s showing me the attention you should be showing me!

“Then the two of them all got in a fight so then TLC was like ‘We gonna write a song called Creep.’ Now everyone knows that songs about me (laughs hysterically), that’s why I’m all over the place on that song (sings) ‘So I creep yeah, keep it on the down low’ They got into an argument and almost got into a fistfight.”

Was the lazy boyfriend a scrub? “No. No scrub,” she says, music to our ears. “A scrub in the sense of not being a good boyfriend, but he was good to his mom. It’s amazing, we made up the word then everybody used it for their own situation. It’s never got old,” she says. A quick recap: “A scrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly, And is also known as a buster, Always talkin’ about what he wants, And just sits on his broke ass”.

Crunk rhymes and cheating talk to the side, T-Boz gets philosophical.

“You don’t realise how big your songs are until you go out in public and someone says ‘I was gonna kill myself but your song saved me.’ I brought my daughter over to meet Lady Gaga and then Gaga started bawling, telling me I changed her life with my music, she was an outcast, I thought ‘What is going on?’ You never know who your music is gonna touch. My daughter was saying to me ‘Why did you make Gaga cry?’” she says. “Or you’re at an awards show and all the heavy hitters are in your category and you think ‘They’re not gonna call my name and then all the cameras turn to you, ‘Oh my God, I beat out everybody.’”