struggle is at the center of TLC's imperfect but intriguing new album,
Fan Mail. There's a moment six tracks in when the tension really explodes. "I'm Good at Being Bad" starts off like a Mariah Carey beach fantasy, all luminescent waves and gently clasped hands. Then a bitter hip-hop beat crushes the music's swell and the singers start snarling, spitting out obscenities. They're facing down a pampered lover but also the fool who did the coddling. It's a standoff between the doe and the dominatrix in one woman; the tougher fighter clearly wins, but not without some cost.
It makes sense that TLC would be the girl group to address the post-feminist identity crisis, even though T-Boz, Chilli and Left Eye probably wouldn't use that phrase. TLC's members and their male mentors designed the trio to embody the various aspects of an ideal woman. Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas is the spun-sugar ingenue, her clear voice exquisitely love struck. Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes is the tomboy, the rapper who spars happily with the fellas. Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins walks the line between these two extremes, her indelible down-low growl somehow both male and female, libertine and self-possessed. TLC's early efforts explored this range within the fairly safe context of a teen group (albeit one that promoted safe sex by pinning condoms to its costumes). 1994's CrazySexyCool found the perfect balance, melding heartache, lust and inspiration so smoothly that all the elements merged into one seductive flow.
In the time between that album's rise and this one's release, however, TLC's tranquility frayed. Lopes had the roughest time, dealing with the very public fallout from a stormy relationship. Watkins went public with her battle against sickle-cell anemia. Thomas experienced a happier -- but still hard to negotiate -- change when she gave birth to the son of the trio's main producer and so-called Svengali, Dallas Austin. Then there was the group's money crisis, which resulted in a period of bankruptcy. The real lives of these women interfered with the harmonious image that continued to sell millions of copies of CrazySexyCool.
Fan Mail takes these crises into account, if only metaphorically. In general, the sound is sharper, more aggressive; clearly, Austin and his musical partners, L.A. Reid and Babyface, have been feeling the heat generated by their Virginia neighbor Timbaland. The corny Computer Age skits that frame the record, with highly processed vocal bits conjuring Cher more than Radiohead, don't work. But it doesn't matter. TLC's sexy move
