In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
Robert’s mother got uncomfortable whenever Robert would sing “No Scrubs.” Robert was a little boy with autism, and he had a habit of singing every song on the radio in a beautiful, crystalline, slightly unearthly voice. In the summer of 1999, that meant that Robert was singing “No Scrubs” a lot. I knew Robert because I spent a bunch of summers working at a camp for people with disabilities in the Western Maryland mountains. Robert and his mom both stayed at the camp that summer, and Robert’s mother seemed happy when the whole staff would marvel over Robert’s singing voice. But she she did not like it when he sang “No Scrubs.”
One afternoon, Robert’s mom asked me, “Do you know what a scrub means?” This was a rhetorical question. She did not answer it. That question has been lingering in my head for the past 23 years because I knew exactly what “scrub” meant. Everybody did. I knew “scrub” as a basketball-court insult; anyone who bricked a layup was a scrub. But even if I hadn’t had that experience, TLC helpfully defined the word scrub on the very first verse of “No Scrubs”: “A scrub is a guy who thinks he’s fly and is also known as a busta — always talking ’bout what he wants and just sits on his broke ass.” What was ambiguous about that?
Maybe the “No Scrubs” lyrics represent an uncharitable way of looking at people without money, but there’s nothing filthy or degrading about the song. How did Robert’s mom not know that? Ever since, that whole interaction has stood out in my mind as a testament to the ways in which certain parents will always regard the music that their kids like. They’ll always hear something objectionable in a song, no matter how anodyne. It doesn’t matter if the song opens by clearly defining its terms. It doesn’t matter if the song acts as its own Genius annotation page. It still won’t get no love from a certain type of parent. That’s too bad. Robert’s mom was a nice lady, and she was missing out because “No Scrubs” is a great song.
There is a reason to hear “No Scrubs” and get upset, but to acknowledge that, you have to confront the possibility that you are a scrub. When TLC recorded “No Scrubs,” they were the most popular girl group on the planet. Their last album CrazySexyCool had sent two singles to #1, and it had gone diamond. TLC took more than four years to follow that album because they were stuck in a terribly exploitative contract, somehow losing money for every record that they sold. TLC declared bankruptcy in 1995, when their songs were on top of the world, and they renegotiated their deal with their label LaFace. At the time, people reacted with disbelief that a group as popular as TLC could go broke, but nobody ever accused T-Boz, Left Eye, or Chili of being scrubs.
Before releasing FanMail, the 1999 album that gave us “No Scrubs,” TLC came perilously close to breaking up. Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes had already gone through a rough time with her arson conviction and with her court-ordered rehab stint, and she was mad at being left off of TLC’s own records, not even being included on the songs where she didn’t have a rap verse. Rozonda “Chili” Thomas had a baby with Dallas Austin, the producer who’d overseen TLC’s first two albums, and Austin held up the production of FanMail by demanding a whole lot of money and total creative control.
In the years between albums, the members of TLC thought about what it might be like to go solo or to attempt some kind of public life outside the group. Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins released the solo soundtrack single “Touch Myself” in 1996, and it peaked at #40. Left Eye rapped on the all-star remix of Lil Kim’s “Not Tonight,” which peaked at #6….
Read More: The Number Ones: TLC’s “No Scrubs”