1/5
Whereas Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were murdered at the top of their game, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes died in a car accident during her spiral down the charts, transitioning from sassy rap star to reality-TV lurking has-been. Sadly, listening to the former TLC member’s posthumous Eye Legacy doesn’t give us any hope that she was on her way back up.
Her first solo full-length released in the U.S., Legacy is comprised of songs that Lopes penned before the accident, as well as remixes from 2001 solo album Supernova released exclusively in the U.K. But instead of improving upon the originals, remix treatment detracts from Left Eye’s halfway decent rhymes. ‘Block Party’ removes the simple percussion of its Supernova counterpart and replaces it with overwhelmingly corny, synthesized horns, failing to capture the original’s endearing, childlike innocence.
Although poor production is a recurring theme in Eye Legacy, it is epitomized by ‘Never Will Eye Eva,’ which sounds like someone ran Left Eye’s vocals through Microsoft’s awful new music software SongSmith on the modern-rock setting, forcing Lopes to spit over-contrived power chords, capped by generic guitar solos.
Left Eye’s rhymes on Legacy are largely hit-or-miss ‘mdash; her flow is brutally choppy on some tracks (see ‘Crank It’) and flat-out uninventive on others. ‘Let’s Just Do It’ is the only track featuring TLC; worse still, the girl group’s kickass mentality and energetic spunk are nowhere to be found.
In the end, Lopes’s scattered heartfelt verses prove the only saving grace for her dream album ‘mdash; even then, it’s probably better left to rest.