Featuring T-Boz’s cool detachment and sultry vocals, Chilli’s sweet balladeering, and Lisa’s bold, self-written raps, their debut album, O000000hhh…On the TLC Tip, took on the challenge of cultivating a new strain of black-girl feminism for a generation of young women whose day-to-day reality bears little relation to the doctrines of women’s studies classes. When Lopes joined forces with the mad-talented singers Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas in 1991, the trio damn near led a grassroots womanist revolution, banji-girl style. But where is the noise when the multiplatinum rapper happens to be female? When her stage persona is not that of the victimized “I don’t give a f**k” gangsta bi**h but of a fun-loving, pro-woman homegirl? Hip hop’s “crazy ni**as” make all the headlines. “Yo,” went the conventional wisdom, “that bi**h is crazy.” Rison’s brother, Reggie Brown, reported seeing Lopes watching the rising flames and shouting, “I don’t care anymore!” After smashing up three cars, she fled the scene in the one vehicle left running. I went on a 20-mile walk.” Lisa then marched into a bathroom and lit a piece of cardboard, which somehow set the six-bedroom, five-bath gray stucco mansion on fire. “I couldn’t control her,” he said, “so I left. She started hitting him, and he admits slapping her, “not to hurt her but to calm her.” Apparently the blow didn’t help, nor did sitting on top of her. “I knew she’d been drinking some,” he said afterward. Lopes was outside screaming when Rison arrived. to his star-studded, maximum-security neighborhood, Country Club of the South. The night of the real fire went like this: Rison stayed out late with friends, came home at 6 a.m. But as with Nicole and O.J., the authorities and the media missed the smoke before the fire. Both Rison and Lopes denied that she was assaulted, or that the gun was aimed at anything but air, and charges were eventually dropped. Lopes apparently lunged at the arresting officer. According to two passersby, Rison hit Lopes and then fired a 9 mm handgun when they tried to intervene. If the sh*t ain’t right, don’t worry about what people think.”Ī violent altercation between Lopes and Rison last September ’93 in the parking lot of a grocery store in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Buckhead was similarly downplayed in the press. Seeing Lopes drive away in her man’s car is like the exclamation point on the only statement she made to me about her stormy relationship: “All these people trying to break me and Andre up-that’s one reason I try to stay in it, because I want to prove these people wrong. I mean, her only defense would be insanity, right?”Īs intemperate as it looks to outside eyes, the relationship between TLC’s leading lady and the NFL star is far from over. “That girl, she’s either going to jail or a mental institution. “After this latest thing, I certainly hope it’s over,” says Rison’s mother, who never approved of his involvement with the rapper. “I can replace a house,” he said when the smoke had cleared, “but I can’t replace the life I had, or a certain girl.” He still loves Lopes, despite the fights, despite the alleged torching and car smashing, despite losing all his clothes and his football trophies in the fire. This parting image goes a long way toward confirming what Rison’s been saying ever since his $2 million mansion was destroyed by fire in the early morning hours of June 9, 1994. Lisa always looks like a little girl in that car.” “The white Benz,” says a friend of Lopes, “that’s Andre’s car. In the driver’s seat of the big German car, she looks even tinier, like she can barely see over the steering wheel. (In fact, Lopes’s 27-year-old boyfriend, an All-Pro receiver for the Atlanta Falcons, now lives with friends.) Driving a white 1994 Mercedes Benz S420 with the license plate BAD MOON, Lopes is among the last to leave the party. Others gossip or amuse themselves with jokes about pyros, hiding matches, and Andre Rison’s homelessness. Seeing her now, it’s hard to imagine this diminutive young lady as the outrageous Left Eye character of TLC’s stage shows and videos (so named for wearing glasses with a lens on the right and a condom on the left), or as the hard-drinking, hot-tempered wild woman who’s been depicted in the headlines since “the incident,” as it’s referred to in hushed tones by those who care about her. She’s reserved, but still determined to exercise her right to be in this mix. Lopes’s behavior seems unusually subdued, but then again, this is the first time she’s been out socially since her recent arrest on felony arson charges. TLC And Lifetime Unveil New Trailer For 'TLC Forever' Documentary
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