Well, as a NonCablelite (like the famous tribe from the Bible), I wasn't able to watch the TLC movie last night. I doubt I would have even if I did have cable. I can guess what happened though. They made a bunch of records, but not a bunch of money. One of them dies at the end.
Okay, that was wrong. I take that back.
I was actually a huge TLC fan back in the day. I got my first CD player for my 13th birthday, and I literally ran 3 miles to Nobody Beats the Wiz in order to buy CrazySexyCool and II. Those were the first CDs I ever owned. A part of the original trilogy of "Wow, CDs cost more than tapes. I guess I'm not buying any more of these." For two years I held it down with Boyz II Men, TLC and Bone's, E. 1999 Eternal. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Like getting a CD player in '95, I was late to the pop culture party when it came to TLC. Once again for those just tuning in, I lived with my grandparents who listened to gospel and talk radio 24/7. Add to that the fact that I didn't have cable or know anyone who did, and the only time I ever saw TLC was when they were on Arsenio. As a matter of fact, I didn't see any of the videos from Oooh On the TLC Tip until I was in college. But I remember exactly when I first saw Red Light Special.
There's a special moment in every 12 year old boy's life when his family finally joins the 1980s and gets cable. For me, this was 1994. I spent the first night trying to squint through the scrambled lines of the premium channels (Yeah, those channels too). I stumbled across The Box (Music Television YOU control) during that special scene of Red Light Special. You would've thought I'd discovered fire. I went to school the next day with a ton of questions: "I just saw this video with these three girls playing cards and halfway through one of them..." My friends knew what I was talking about when I said, "I just saw this video..."
I ran to the library with my new knowledge of TLC and checked 1994's version of the internet, Infotrac. It was like the Atari version of Google: All of the magazines in one CD-ROM! With the magic of a dot matrix printer, it only took 2 hours to print off 20 pages. I tore the little holes off and headed home. For the next few months, you could find me in the magazine aisle of the Safeway on Naylor and Good Hope Road at least once a month reading up on the exploits of my future wives.
You could also find the posters that magically disappeared from Word Up and Right On hanging up in my locker. Just Chilli though. The other two didn't interest me. I thought T-Boz was playing for the other team, and although she was fine, I felt LeftEye was more trouble than she was worth. But Chilli...sweet, innocent, "Now every black girl with curly hair is gonna lie and say she has Indian in her family" Rozonda Chilli Thomas. We were gonna get married and have cute, dark skinned, curly haired, 4 foot tall children. She was so bad that not only did she have teenage girls lying about their heritage, they were doing everything except hold a magnifying glass up to the eight or nine strands of baby hair that they had gelled to the sides of their head.
But such a thing isn't meant to last. Aaliyah blew up a year or two later, and suddenly TommyGirl, long weaves and the possibility of a lazy eye were in style. I never looked back. Chilli settled for Usher and that was that.
We'll always have The Box and video #440.
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