The two remaining members of TLC are Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozanda “Chili” Thomas, who were left on their own after Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes unfortunately lost her life in a car accident in 2002. The ladies thought that crowdfunding their final album was their best choice, rather than going the route of record labels. Chili explained it in an interview with Time Magazine:
We wanted to continue to stay outside the box. Fifteen years ago, we were really one of the first groups to work with MP3s, people couldn’t believe we had done something like that successfully.
Working with Kickstarter and all of the wonderful things that they’ve done, and their excitement [about] wanting to work with us – you definitely don’t want to work with someone who’s not excited about your project because they’re not going to put their heart, sweat and soul into it like we’re going to do. We knew we wanted to take that avenue. Doing that with them allows us to involve our fans a lot more than what we’re done in the past. It’s not so new for us, but it’s newer for them, and newer for us to have them so involved. It’s different and exciting.
In February 2015, the Kickstarter campaign successfully closed with the ladies achieving 287% of their goal of $150,000 – a grand total of $430,255 to create, record, mix, master and release their final album. Their backers were given an estimated delivery date of September 2015 to receive their albums. But, we’re in November… where is it?
Months have gone with literal radio silence. And everyone seems to be in an uproar citing that they’ve been duped for their money. And, as people do in this era, they’ve taken to social media and started their own hashtag – #TLCIsGoingToJailParty.
Chilli and T-Boz after y'all gave them money #TLCisGoingToJailParty https://t.co/byqbosdc0K
— Beysus † Godga (@GagaLovesBey) November 2, 2015
Finally, on Friday, November 6, an update was posted on their Kickstarter page:
Hey TLC supporters!
Over the past few weeks we’ve been running around LA meeting with all of the major music publishers. Our new album has generated a lot of interest, so we are currently deciding which writers we want to work with. We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio with Ron Fair listening to a flood of new tracks that were submitted to us (including some promising work from great young talent). At this stage, the most important thing we can do is work with the writers to make sure they understand our vision for the record. We want to make sure our voice continues to come through on this new album and that we express our true feelings the same way we always have. We actually just finished one of the best sessions we’ve had – we started the track from scratch…just the way we like it! Supa funky!
We are focused 110% on making this final album for y’all. Most importantly, we’ll continue to post updates from the studio so that you can be part of the action, and feel what it’s really like to make a new album with us!
I guess all there is left to do is wait, TLC fans. Who knows what actually happened with that half million. Must been a good party….
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