“What’s My Name?”: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes as the Angry Black Woman by Tai Carson-Smith ’25

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was a rapper with larger-than-life personality and a reputation that preceded her for a large part of her life. But, how much of that reputation is the real story, and how much is due to the characterization that Left Eye, and other Black women face as inherently angry or crazy? In my project, I spoke with other Black smithies about the infamous trope of the Angry Black Woman, its impact on the legacy of Lisa Lopes, and how (or if) she could have ever overcome it.

Transcript

TAI: It’s June 8th, 1994 in Atlanta. In a mansion in the affluent suburb of Alpharetta, a fight between a couple is escalating. She hits him. In return, he slaps her, throws her on the bed, and sits on her. Eventually, the man leaves, but the woman stays behind. She grabs one of her boyfriend’s pairs of sneakers and a matchbook, goes into the bathroom, and lights them on fire in the bathtub. The woman leaves the house, making a point to smash the windshield of her boyfriend’s cars. Meanwhile, the fire spreads, and when the man returns, the roof of his home is completely engulfed in flames. The story probably would have gotten attention regardless, but it didn’t hurt the two people involved were NFL wide receiver Andre Rison and his girlfriend, rising star rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. For most people, especially today, this is the first thing and maybe the only thing they’ll ever hear about Lisa Lopes. It was for me anyways, but obviously that’s not the full story.

[“Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” by TLC (Instrumental)]

TAI: Lisa Left Eye Lopes was born in 1971 in Philadelphia. In 1991, she became one-third of R&B group TLC, alongside Tionne Watkins, known as T-Boz, and Rozonda Thomas, who went by Chili. When they debuted, the three were immediately set apart by their unique appearance, their distinct voices, and their personalities. But Lisa, in particular, stood out for being the boldest in spreading the group’s messages of women’s empowerment and safe sex advocacy at the height of the AIDS epidemic through her rhymes.

[“Creep” by TLC (Left Eye Version)]

LISA: “Creepin’ is the number one item on the chart

Rippin’ families apart/the leading cause of a broken heart

Injuries can be fatal/May infect the prenatal

HIV is often sleeping in the creepin’ cradle

[“His Story” by TLC]

LISA: Yo, this is a story of a male female threat to society

You know, being misjudged and not respected for what we are

But I wanna send this special shout out to my girl Tawana Brawley

‘Cause no matter what we say or what we do

They’ll always believe his story  

[“Depend on Myself” by TLC]

LISA: You should go to where I’m comin’ from take your turn tryna teach ya dumb-dumb 

So it be (Take your turn) just a bad memory

Till you truthfully see are you listenin’ to me

Till you truthfully see independently

Like I handle myself I need nobody, nobody else

TAI: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was one of the most creative, unfiltered, resilient, and complicated people to ever exist in the public eye. So why does so much of her legacy remain boiled down to that house fire back in 1994? The answer may lie in the Angry Black Woman. The Angry Black Woman is a lot of things. She’s sassy, irritable, she’s set off by the smallest things, she’s even violent a lot of the time, and most importantly, she’s not real.

[“Intermission-Lude” by TLC]

KIM: Yeah, hi, my name is Kim Estrada.

STEVIE: Hi, I’m Stevie Ordway. 

ARI: Hi, my name is Ari Cross.

TAI: I talked to three other black Smithies about what the Angry Black Woman trope means to them and how they felt it had personally affected their lives.

STEVIE: To me, the Angry Black Woman represents a caricature, almost, of what most people assume to be almost a constant state for black women.

ARI: I think the Angry Black Woman trope is obviously something designed by white supremacy to keep black women from speaking out about the discrepancies that they face, like, not only on a race basis, but also on a gender basis.

STEVIE: It’s a way for the majority, the dominant culture, to put black women in a box and relegate them to a stereotype, which is the Angry Black Woman.

TAI: Yep. Ask anyone who identifies as a black woman and they’ll tell you all about the Angry Black Woman trope and how it’s designed to paint us as irrational, unstable, violent, and generally crazy. You don’t have to do much to be accused of it either.

KIM: In our house, there’s only one vacuum. I brought the fucking vacuum out to the fourth floor and I forgot to bring it downstairs. And, I’m someone who likes to vacuum my room regularly, so I’m a culprit. People know that I have the vacuum. It got to the point where this person didn’t feel comfortable enough, quote unquote, “didn’t feel comfortable enough” to come talk to me about it. So they went to the HP and told the HP, like, oh, like. “Yeah. Like, Kim’s a little, like, intimidating. Like, I don’t really want to go. So this whole roundabout thing, like this person then, like—

TAI: Had you ever met this person before? 

KIM: No.

STEVIE: Leadership type roles, particularly when I was a director for a student org’s production of Grease, which was very fun. But in that experience, I recognize that my team being predominantly people of color, we faced an incredible amount of microaggressions. Because we were all, this other intentional or unintentional sort of, this lens was put on us that everything that we did was aggressive.

TAI: So the crazy black woman trope basically trains people to expect and interpret aggression from black women, even without evidence. But if they have evidence, well, that’s even better. And the house fire, combined with the title of TLC’s upcoming sophomore album, Crazy Sexy Cool, made for a field day.

E! HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: In 2002, Left Eye, the “L” in the Grammy-winning trio TLC, was what you might call a “firecracker”.

TAI: Of course, the trope and the media’s coverage didn’t leave much room for nuance. Like the fact that Lisa Lopes, at the time of the incident, had been struggling with alcohol abuse. Or the fact that Lisa’s relationship with Andre Rison was known to be tumultuous then, and would be considered abusive today. The narrative was simply this: Left Eye was crazy for burning down the house, and she burnt down the house because she was crazy.

LISA: And it was like this crazy bitch came in drunk and burnt the house down. And it’s like, where did y’all get that from? You know, and that’s what I am, because perception. It’s all about what the media puts out, and what people read is gold, it’s true, and then that’s what everybody perceived me to be.

TAI: So if this wasn’t the real Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, then who was she? Well, in the time after the incident, she’d have no problem telling you herself.

LISA: I’d like to introduce myself. My name is crazy. When I say what’s my name, y’all say crazy! What’s my name? (Crazy!) My claim to fame is—(Crazy!) Left Eye, better known as—(Crazy!) ‘Cause when I’m on the throne, I’m—(Crazy!)

TAI: It’s March 2000. TLC is touring their third album, titled Fanmail, yet another of Lisa’s concepts. The setlist is stacked with all of their greatest hits, and as the part of the show, each of the three women have put together their own sort of interlude, showcasing what they each bring to the group. Lisa’s is first, putting the “Crazy” in CrazySexyCool. She has a call and response with the audience, encouraging them to call her crazy. She’s rapping in her signature style, fast and upbeat, about all the different things she is: “Psycho in the mind”, “Beautiful but tough”, “A visionary MC”, and an “arsonist”. In between verses, she even shows us that she’s also a talented juggler, magician, and pianist. And takes the time to crack another joke around her past during a trick.

LISA: But then, as I think, a light seems to pop into my head. Anybody got a light? (Pause) Anybody got a house? (Rimshot) Just kidding!

TAI: This was not a new thing for her. In the years since the incident, she’s actually made reference to the fire in quite a few songs.

[“U Know What’s Up by Montell Williams (feat. Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes)

LISA: So if you’re serious, I’m curious to see what ya got

My love is furious ‘cause I believe in blowin’ up spots

[“Over Me” by TLC]

LISA: When the house burned down, I took the blame

When the money got funny, I took it to court

When most of y’all chicks wouldn’t’ve even fought

[“Not Tonight” by Lil’ Kim (feat. Missy Elliot, Da Brat, Left Eye, Angie Martinez)]

LISA: Strictly a bellringer/Lay another finger on this Big Bad Wolf/Miss lady rap singer

I’ll be the one to blame as the flame keep risin’ to the top/And it don’t stop

TAI: It’s clear at this point that Lisa has pretty much  much accepted her role as the crazy one—and even seems to be trying to reclaim it for herself. But like, is that even possible?

STEVIE: …The value of labeling. Because that’s certainly what keeps some people stuck in, you know, kind of like a relegated or subordinate category. 

ARI: I definitely think that the house fire incident has certainly impacted her legacy as far as being known as more of an artist, rather than someone who has a few loose screws. But, I think that there’s so much nuance to that as well, based on being a woman and sort of being gaslit into having the more quiet role rather than her getting to be her full self.

TAI: So maybe it is possible for black women to reclaim things like the Angry Black Woman trope. Or maybe it isn’t. But honestly, you have to ask: do we really want to?

ARI I think that scenarios like that, like portray black women, have not helped the sanity at all for women like Left Eye, just because it’s normalized violence in a way. And I think that women in Left Eye’s situation have internalized that so much as their norm that it’s led them away from, I think, doing what’s most important to them, which in Left Eye’s case, it was her artistry.

TAI: It’s true that things would obviously be better if these types of tropes could die. And the act of reclamation may not be so empowering depending on what it is you’re trying to reclaim. So then why do I actually admire how Lisa Lopes did it so much? 

And I do actually still admire how she reclaimed the stereotype. But I’m like, I don’t want the stereotype to be that we’re crazy or angry. So I’m like, what do I like about the way she did it so much? And I’m like, maybe it’s not the fact that she’s claiming the stereotype. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s claiming her individual worst moment. She’s saying, I’m a person who had a really, really bad moment. I had problems that I didn’t deal with in the right way. And that’s a part of me. That always will be a part of me. But that doesn’t detract from the other things I’m doing. 

The best way to describe Lisa Lopes was shameless. She accepted the good and the bad of herself. And she displayed both equally. She did some crazy stuff. But she was human. She was growing up, growing in general, and working to move past it. And in a way, her asserting that she can do that, asserting her humanity in all of its complicated messiness is how she subverted the Angry Black Woman trope.

ARI: People 1000% appreciate authenticity because it allows us to give personhood to other people. Her ability to make that personal connection with her audiences about being human and messing up has done a lot for her.

TAI: But as time went on, when people remembered Left Eye, two stories would come to the forefront of the conversation: what happened in 1994 and the way she died. Chances are if you were someone born after her death like I was, these would be the first and last thing you ever learned about her.

KIM: As a child, especially as a black child, you get introduced to TLC and you know, it’s a strong trio of women and then, you know, unfortunately I then heard a TLC song where there’s only two members of TLC on it. And I remember asking my brother like, “Yo, what the fuck was going on here?” And he was like, “Yeah, she passed away.” And I think for a really long time, so much of Lisa’s legacy unfortunately was left off to how she passed away.

STEVIE: The story that I was told was always that she acted crazy. Like, that was it. You realize how much she did for TLC and I think that, yeah, like it was just interesting that I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know all that about her.”

TAI: Was it all in vain? Did she ever stand a chance of overcoming her past even if she had lived a little longer to do more in her life? Or would it be that no matter what she did she would have always been just another Angry Black Woman? In hindsight, there were a lot of factors that were always going to be beyond her control.

KIM: Because of the role that men played in their musical genre, or like the formation of their celebrity identity, we don’t really get to know these women outside of “Left Eye”. And that’s not who she is, that’s not all of who she is.

[“Sumthin’ Wicked This Way Comes” by TLC (Instrumental)]

TAI: It’s 2021. The world has been quarantining from COVID-19 for over a year now. Everybody’s got a lot of free time; And I’ve been using most of mine to expand my music taste. I developed a particular love for 90s R&B. There’s Brandy, whose discography I’ve just now realized goes beyond “The Boy Is Mine”. Aaliyah, whose albums and videos aren’t on streaming at this point, but I’ve been discovering through the ever-reliable source of YouTube archive channels. And TLC, who I only knew a few things about. I knew “Creep”, I knew “No Scrubs”, and I knew what my mom told me about the one called Left Eye as a child while doing my hair: “You know she burned down her boyfriend’s house, right? And then she died in a car crash.” Since rediscovering them as a teenager, I learned there’s a lot more to it, and her, than just that. 

Lisa Lopes was the daughter of a seamstress and an army sergeant, who was as strict as he was musically gifted. She was creative from a very young age, and demonstrated a love for performing and music early on. According to her bandmates, she was the mind behind each of the group’s album concepts. She was even the one to coin the phrase CrazySexyCool, which she thought worked because every woman has a little bit of each in her. And, she was the one who had the idea to cover an entire album jacket in the names of fans who sent in mail that they were never able to answer due to management issues. Most of all, Lisa Lopes was a woman of conviction. She chose not to be featured on TLC’s hit song “Creep” because she didn’t agree with the message that encouraged cheating, which inspired her to write a new verse years later urging safety. It was that same conviction that led her, along with T-Boz, Chili and some friends of theirs, to storm the office of record producer Clive Davis and effectively hold him hostage to get answers as for where the group’s money was when they were going bankrupt. Somehow, that situation didn’t make the news at the time. But if it had, no doubt it would have been yet another reason for all of them to be labeled “crazy”. Because, yeah, at times, Lisa Lopes did get a little bit crazy. But she was also spiritual, and strong, and innovative, and emotional. She was everything a human being could be at once, for better or worse. And because she was all these things, she became the idol for little black girls all around the world, including one coming of age almost 30 years after her death.

Watch the Performance that Inspired this Project:

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes on the Fanmail tour in Atlanta, GA, 2000. Credit to Iconic Music on YouTube.

Credits & Thanks

Thanks to my interviewees Kim, Stevie and Ari, whose contributions were invaluable. Thanks to Emily Duncan Wilson for being understanding and helpful throughout the process. And thanks to YouTube’s community of devoted pop culture archivists, without whom I wouldn’t even know to tell this story.

Sources

Kelly, Ken. “Lisa ‘left Eye’ Lopes of TLC Burns down Andre Rison’s House.” The Boombox, 9 June 2014, theboombox.com/lisa-left-eye-lopes-tlc-burns-house/.

“Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes – Death, Movie & TLC.” Biography, www.biography.com/musicians/lisa-left-eye-lopes. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.

Smith, Niall. “Why Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes and TLC Were Powerful Feminist Icons in the Music Industry.” The Culture Crypt, The Culture Crypt, 22 July 2020, www.theculturecrypt.com/posts/why-lisa-left-eye-lopes-and-tlc-were-powerful-feminist-icons-in-the-music-industry#google_vignette=.

Taylor, Trey. “Hollyweird: The Time TLC’s Lisa Lopes Torched Her Boyfriend’s Mansion.” PAPER Magazine, PAPER Magazine, 15 June 2020, www.papermag.com/hollyweird-lisa-lopes#rebelltitem7.

“TLC’s Chilli on Taking Clive Davis Hostage (and Renegotiating Their Contract) | Full Sail University.” YouTube, Full Sail University, youtu.be/lQ3YFYd_R_g?si=9MDTzsMaBjCIQE7F. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.

Audio Credits