I love TLC, but clearly they haven’t made some of the best business choices during their career. The legendary hip hop, r&b, pop trio of Left Eye, T-Boz, and Chili recently had a biopic movie released on VH1 about the rise and trying times of their all girl group.
The VH1 movie “Crazy, Sexy, Cool: The TLC Story” was a terrific success when it was aired. With reportedly over 4.5 million viewers, it is the largest viewed cable movie of the year and breathe some serious life into the VH1 channel. And to the surprise of many, the movie was actually pretty good. Drew Sidora, T-Boz, Keke Palmer, Chili, Lil Mama, Left Eye, and Rochelle Aytes, Pebbles, all did a wonderful job with on the small screen.
The group TLC experience major commercial success in the 1990s. They signed with LaFace Records in 1991, sold 22 million copies of their 1994 album CrazySexyCool, and another 10 million in 1999 with Fanmail. However, despite their commercial success, the group experiences bankruptcy, loss of their intellectual property rights, fights, death and more.
Apparently, the groups manager, Pebbles, really took advantage of the young ladies who were green to the music business at the time. Even though they were selling millions of dollars in music, they were not seeing much of that money at all. This was based on the poor contract set up between the manager, Pebbles, and the group. In fact, according to the movie, the girls of TLC never even saw their first contract.
According to the surviving members, Chili and T-Boz, Pebbles really manipulated them to keep them subservient.
“And she cried and she did the whole ‘you don’t trust me,” T-Boz said of Pebbles. “That was true. She even had a tear. You remember the tear?” T-Boz added, looking at Chilli. “We call it the ‘Demi Moore tear’.”
Again, it seems Pebbles really took advantage of these young ladies and even owned the name of the group for the longest.
When asked if Pebbles still owned the name. “No,” T-Boz responded. “We had to buy it from her — a million dollars a letter. Three million dollars.”
“And she said she didn’t get enough money,” added Chilli.
Chilli and T-Boz added that Pebbles threatened to sue the duo if she saw something in the movie she didn’t like.
Needless to say, Pebbles saw a lot in the movie she didn’t like, so this saga isn’t over any time soon.
However, we thought this would be a great time to speak to you about owning your intellectual property. You have to protect yourself in all business dealings. When money, power and fame are involved, you cannot afford to just “trust” someone doing business with you.
TLC learned this lesson the hard way, but you don’t have to. You have an opportunity to ensure your protect your intellectual and business property at every turn. There is no way you can allow anyone to take advantage you and your hard work in your dealings.
Be sure to hire your own lawyers when dealing with contracts. Never just accept the lawyer of management. You want someone to be paid by you and have loyalty to you. Always incorporate your business and file for intellectually property rights when necessary.
In business, it is always business and never personal, so be sure to keep that in mind moving forward, so hopefully you don’t ever have to be in the position of these ladies of TLC.
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