OTR, Take 55: TLC - CrazySexyCool

Oh! Well hello, old friend. It's been a while. So good to see you!

Me? Yeah, things are totally normal over on my end. The bags under my eyes? I haven't been keeping up with my skincare routine; nothing to worry about.

I know, I haven't reached out into your inbox for a little while. Ages? Well, that might be a bit of an exagger–

No, in fact, I wouldn't believe that you look forward to hearing from me. But that's probably a me-thing. Well anyway, I'm here now.

Death Cab has a song titled "The New Year" that centers around the line, So this is the new year/and I don't feel any different. I've always loved that song because it zeroes in on this notion of a moment of rebirth, of starting anew, as being artificially drawn. What? Just because we went from December 31 to January 1, I'm free to start over?

We're always free to make a change, to engage in the world differently.

But because of the collective notion that the new year offers new beginnings, there's a sense of obligation to partake – in resolutions, in new business visions, renewed devotion to a relationship. Change doesn't occur like that, on schedule and via outside pressure.

I cannot tell you how many people told me that everything will change when McNugget shows up. Everything will change! I think most people meant it in a positive way: there's an amazing thing that's going to happen to your life!

But it can also feel like a threat, no? And here's the truth of my experience having a child: not much has really changed at the core of our lives, except that we have many more routine, menial tasks to do and a lot less sleep. Please don't mistake me: I love my son and am thrilled he's home and healthy. Audra's life has changed a bit more, temporarily, due to being on leave. But he's been additive to our lives rather than fundamentally changing our world.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong? The most difficult aspect of all of this is a consistent, screaming self-doubt. It's been a long time since I've had no idea what I was doing. By the time you hit 40, you've got a pretty good idea of what you're good at – the things that people will pay you to do, that will get you a pat on the head for being such a clever boy, the things you do because you just really enjoy them. And once we get a sense of those, we stick mostly in that safe area of competence and excellence. Some of us routinely push out of that safe space to grow, but even that is a deliberate act: we know we're not good at something and have decided to suck at it for a while so that eventually we get competent and maybe someday very good at it.

Having a child thrust into your life is a different thing entirely. Yes, we chose it. Hell, we fought like crazy to get here. But the move from abstract into very evident reality is, at times, shocking and usually humbling. We're getting the hang of it.

(Audra and I have chosen not to share McNugget's name or visage on social media. You may find it hard to believe, given my apparent openness, but we are pretty private people.)

The day after McNugget was born, an edition of On the Record was on my calendar. We were sitting in the hospital, on zero sleep, Audra less than 24 hours post c-section, McNugget sleeping in one of my first, pathetic attempts at swaddling. Audra turned and asked me, "Aren't you going to do OTR?"

"Do you see a record player in here?"

That reads harsher than I said it. Still, she scowled and responded, "Since when was On the Record about the record?"

I had to concede the point. The record focus is a trojan horse, my friends, a storytelling structure that allows me an excuse to write about most anything I want.

And then, out of the blue, she said: "I'm going to buy you some good records to talk about. I'm sick of all your 'cool' records for the 'cool kids.'" Cut down to size, just like that. She has a way!

So here we go with our first in the Audra Series.

Let's jump back 30 years to one of the richest years in music history: 1994. There are a few anni mirabiles in music, but for people of my generation, 1994 was the year. Just think of all the amazing, groundbreaking music that was released:

• Illmatic, Nas
• Blue Album, Weezer
• MTV Unplugged, Nirvana
• Definitely Maybe, Oasis
• Ready to Die, Notorious B.I.G.
• The Downward Spiral, NIN
• Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Outkast
• Grace, Jeff Buckley
• Ill Communication, Beastie Boys
• Dummy, Portishead
• Parklife, Blur
• Mellow Gold, Beck
• Monster, R.E.M.
• Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Pavement
• Diary, Sunny Day Real Estate
• Selected Ambient Works, Vol II, Aphex Twin
• There's Nothing Wrong With Love, Built to Spill
• Rubberneck, Toadies
• Do You Want More?!!!??!, The Roots

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. One of the standouts from this standout year is CrazySexyCool, the sophomore album from TLC, who – along with Outkast – was beginning to make a name for Atlanta as a hub of hip hop and r&b.

Audra bought this record thinking she was going to be making me review something that isn't to my taste; she was quite wrong on that front!

I have a very distinct memory of watching SportsCenter on June 9, 1994. It was the first time that I'd become aware of TLC. A weird introduction, right? Well, on June 9, 1994, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes accidentally burned down her boyfriend's mansion. That boyfriend? Atlanta Falcon's wide receiver Andre Rison. Always known as the "crazy" one in the group, Left Eye and Rison got into a fight the night of June 8th. When Left Eye woke up, she looked in the mirror and saw the bruises resulting from the fight. Although Left Eye took the hit to reputation, Rison was physically abusive toward her and very controlling.

Seeing the bruising, Left Eye took a bunch of boxes of brand-new sneakers that Rison had just purchased, dumped them into a bathtub, set them alight, and walked away. The rest, as they say...

The group had just begun recording what became CrazySexyCool. The court-ordered anger management and therapy imposed on Left Eye severely limited her availability for the sessions. She would pop in and out of the studio as often as possible, but the majority of the recording was left to Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas.

One of the things I love about looking at the credits of old records is seeing lineages, seeing names that now mean something to us but at the time were just names printed in the album notes. Here are some names listed on CrazySexyCool: Busta Rhymes, Phife, Babyface, Andre Benjamin, Organized Noize, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Jermaine Dupri, and Prince. Back in the 90s, when I was listening to TLC, none of those names meant anything to me. Well, almost: I knew Prince and of A Tribe Called Quest (although it wasn't until high school that I listened to Tribe).

But looking at those names now is a different story – especially when you realize that "Andre Benjamin" is better known as Andre 3000. You can sense the currents steering T-Box, Left Eye, and Chilli – the stamp of approval given by Prince, notoriously stingy in approving covers, in welcoming TLC's version of "If I Was Your Girlfriend." You listen to "Red Light Special" and hear Babyface all over the song and all of the downstream Babyface productions that grew from it.

More than anything as I get older, it becomes apparent to me that all of the amazing works of art I revere were made by normal people. It's normal to have talent, statistically predictable for people to have such gifts. But those people are still people who grow by being around other interesting, talented, troubled people.

The giants we now revere as Pfife-Dog and Andre 3000, Busta and P-Diddy (although he's been knocked off a pedestal pretty fucking hard) were just a bunch of people making things.

And it has always been thus.

Those American ex-pats hanging out on the Left Bank were just a bunch of folks pushing each other to write better stuff. Before they were Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and Stein, they were simply Ernest, Scott, Ezra, and Gertrude.

If they can do amazing things, so can we. Evidence shows they felt exactly the same mix of arrogance and deep insecurity that we do; we've just learned to see the mask as the person.

I've been thinking about this a lot, lately: the fact that we reify current states as natural, limiting our ability to give ourselves the grace to grow. When I feel like I'm bad at being a dad – and, right now, that's pretty often – I have to fight the urge to think of myself as a Bad Father, a permanent state. When I feel resentful for having to take a break from work to feed the baby, I immediately doubt my suitability for being a parent.

But then, we are ever in a state of becoming, are we not? If we stop becoming, are we still living? Artists fear repeating ourselves, falling into a rut. We want forever to be forging into new, undiscovered territory. Yet we also fear losing our voice in the process. My personal coat of arms must prominently feature Janus.

So, here we are, with a distinctly uneven and uncohesive OTR, touching on a fundamental riddle of human existence. I have more to say about the record, and about fatherhood, and could do some editing to clean this up. But I never edit this, and I'm not going to start now. Right now, in this moment, this is the best I can do.

I'm learning to welcome the best I can do in the moment. It's slow work, but I'm growing into many things, these days. All of us are, here at the McGranns.