June 26, 2003 @ 9:00 pm

TLC - 3D (Arista)

Dimitri Ehrlich

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell once sang.

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell once sang. With Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, though, fans did know. So it’s no surprise that her absence mars all but five tracks on 3-D, TLC’s first album since unstable molecule in a chemical compound, she added a sense of imbalance to the trio’s bright, energetic sound, and that tension is what made the whole more interesting than its parts. While the CD is consistently well-produced and performed, the material recorded before Lopes’s death, like “Girl Talk,” is simply darker, sexier, and angrier. That song is written in a minor key, as is most of 3-D, but it’s Left Eye’s contribution that makes the track seethe. Against a tangle of voices and violins bristling with menace, Lopes’s rap burns a hole in the song’s center. Similarly, on “Quickie,” Lopes unleashes a staccato stream of words, joking about something she calls “the Left pimp dance,” as producer Dallas Austin injects a burst of rhythmic chaos. The result is a playful and madly funky sonic bum-rush. The lyrics are about premature ejaculation, and the song’s riotous girl power is bracing enough to make most men wilt. The Lisa-less tracks—which feature Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas—seem competent, but unremarkable. One exception is “Dirty Dirty,” an adventure in pastiche produced by Timbaland. True to Tim’s genre-smashing innovations, the beat is half jungle, a quarter hip hop, and a quarter special sauce, evoking a house party in full swing. But in the spot where Lopes would normally spit her verses, T-Boz shouts, “Left Eye gets a moment of silence.” For a couple of beats there is complete quiet, and that’s when you really start to miss her. An even more overt eulogy is “Turntable,” which verges on mawkishness and sets platitudes (“You had your ups and downs / It happened for a reason”) to a lush, hard-driving pop rhythm. The track commemorates Left Eye in the wrong way: For better or worse, nothing Lopes touched ever came off sounding quite so average. Most of the material recorded after Lopes’s death is by no means a bummer. There are plenty of lovely moments—from the clean, sharp vocal arrangements of “Good Love” to the gorgeous guitar lines Raphael Saadiq plays on “So So Dumb.” The Neptunes fatten their contribution, “In Your Arms Tonight,” with one of those beats that shudders, shivers, and stutters with such controlled intensity one can almost forgive the song’s mindless lyrics: “I just wanna have a good time in your arms tonight.” The ’Tunes use the kick and rim like ace jugglers, constantly shifting the song’s center of gravity and pushing the momentum forward. There’s nothing particularly wrong with these songs, and maybe that’s the problem. A good example is the Babyface-produced “Hands Up,” a film noir–like tale of romantic betrayal. There’s a confrontation inside an ATL club, replete with swarming hoochies and a cheating man caught red-handed. “Trying to shake that ass player, you don’t even dance—s’up with you?” T-Boz demands. When the song ends, we’re still waiting for Lopes’s piercing lines. Without her, the story is incomplete. And in her absence, her presence is everywhere.

Article tags: TLC, 3D, Arista 

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