Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,125

This is the grave of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.

Born in 1971 in Philadelphia, Lopes grew up pretty middle class, which is interesting given her later, if short, life. Her father was a military man and evidently not a great guy, the Great Santini type of military man who ran his family like the military. Whether he was outright abusive or not, I’m not sure, but it didn’t sound good. Her parents then separated and she lived with her grandmother for the most part. Her father was also a very good musician and this got passed to her. She started playing piano as a child and had a natural gift for it. She sang well too. Her sisters formed a little gospel group that sang around the area. At the age of 14, she heard Queen Latifah and Monie Love sing “Ladies First” and she decided this what was she wanted to do with her life.

Lopes got a gig at the age of 19 as a dancer in a music video. That was in Atlanta and so she decided to move there. Shortly after she got there, a producer named Ian Burke, who was based there, decided to create a girl group that would have a tomboy image in the black community, something like a Bell Biv Devoe sound but with a different look and, of course, women. He put out a call for singers. Three were chosen–Tionne Watkins, Crystal Jones (who worked with Burke to come up with the concept), and Lisa Lopes. First, they were known as 2nd Nature, but they soon changed their name to TLC. They started playing around and talking to bigger producers. Jones got tossed from the group by the producers as just not talented enough (bummer since it was partly her idea) and was replaced by Rozonda Thomas. Such is the world of the singing group, I guess.

The whole “Left Eye” thing about Lopes, which really became central to her performing identity, came out of a friend talking about how she had a beautiful left eye. So she played into it. She would cover her right eye with dark glasses. She did that while wearing a condom over it, as TLC promoted safe sex (and in the early 90s, that was critically important to do), and later she got her left eyebrow pierced, which was supposed to accentuate her left eye, but which seems like a silly distraction to me. But then I’m not the market.

Anyway, when TLC released Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip, its 1992 debut album, they went pretty big overnight. It did way better than anyone could have dreamed. Lopes was the lead songwriter. She had a lot of collaborators, as pop music usually does, but she was the lead in the group on writing. It hit #14 on the Billboard Top 200 chart and #3 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. Reviews were kind of mixed on it, but when have reviews mattered in who buys pop music? The album had four big singles–“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” went to #6, “Baby-Baby-Baby” went to #2, “What About Your Friends” went to #7, and then “Hat 2 da Back” only hit #30, and the album was over.

Now, Lopes was already living the party scene in Atlanta. Big time. She started dating Andre Rison, the talented but super volatile wide receiver for the Falcons. This was not a healthy relationship. They were both kind of messed up people–young people with a lot of money and not a lot of control. She was a heavy drinker. He could be abusive. She moved into his house. They got into an argument. He hit her. She filed an assault charge. Of course they stayed together. Several months later, shortly before the 1994 NFL season began, they got into another argument over him cheating on her and Lopes…..burned the house down.

This little moment–I don’t know, at the age of 20, when you are at your peak of consuming popular culture, this was a big deal. NFL combined with huge music star combined with total insanity. I didn’t listen to TLC. At this age, I was listening to a lot of classic rock, moving into jazz, and just starting to investigate country music again after shunning what my parents listened to as a teen. So anyway, this is very stuck in mind. She did not get prison time for this either.

It didn’t really hurt Lopes or TLC, though her stability was a real issue. Right after the arson, Crazysexycool came out and it was a huge, huge album. Lopes was a bit less involved in this album, since she was in rehab for part of the making of it. “Waterfalls” alone is an iconic American song from the 90s, spending 7 weeks as the #1 Billboard song. After this, it was a long time before they released anything else. FanMail actually did really well upon its release in 1999, but after this, Lopes left the group.

Lopes was moving more into production and hip hop anyway. She started her own production company, guest rapped on a lot of albums, hosted a reality show. She released a solo album in 1998. Supernova was positively reviewed by the critics but largely ignored by TLC fans and didn’t sell very well. She left Arista after that and signed with Death Row. Maybe that meant she was going to go a little harder with the follow up.

However, by this time, Lopes was living on the Honduran coast most of the time, involved in some sort of spiritual retreat kind of thing. In 2002, she had rented a car and was driving around. She wasn’t paying attention because this was all part of a stunt where she drove around for some documentary or whatever (we are probably really pushing the boundaries of the word by calling it that) where she was driving and talking. She also wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. All of a sudden, she was about to hit another car. She swerved sharply, wrecked, was thrown from the vehicle, and died. She was 30 years old. It was all filmed. Some of this stuff ended up in a posthumous documentary called The Last Days of Left Eye, released in 2007.

Lisa Left Eye Lopes is buried in Hillandale Memorial Gardens, Lithonia, Georgia. That grave has all the class and taste one would expect. Interestingly, it is not the original stone. Her Wikipedia page has that one. I guess laser printing technology made the family decide to go in full technicolor.

If you would like this series to visit other R&B or hip hop stars, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Eazy-E is in Whittier, California and Pimp C is in Groves, Texas. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.