3D : TLC : Review : Rolling Stone

One cut on 3D leaps out as a contender for TLC's greatest recorded achievement. Hanging on strummed acoustic guitars and anxious live drums, "Damaged" is sung from the perspective of a woman asking her new boyfriend for the patience to forgive insecurities bred by previous bad relationships. It's heartfelt and vulnerable in a way not often attained in today's tough-as-platinum girl-group world; it also extracts the hidden folk-rock element of the Atlanta trio's 1995 smash "Waterfalls" and runs with it in the direction of Pink, a singer who shares a producer, Dallas Austin, with TLC. Featuring soulful vocals from Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas, the Austin-produced song's uncommon tunefulness pays tribute to the confrontational spirit of the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes without her being mentioned or directly invoked.

TLC's fourth and, possibly, final album contains only four songs that clearly bear Lopes' sassy stamp. They are all quintessential TLC tracks, particularly the first single, "Girl Talk," and the terrific independence anthem "Over Me," in which Lopes provocatively raps, "When the house burnt down/I took the blame." But other songs on 3D, recorded after Lopes' death in a 2001 car crash, live up to the challenge presented by losing her. Instead of conventional ballads, between-song interludes and tame filler, there are standouts such as the crunked Missy Elliott and Timbaland dance jam "Dirty Dirty" and the Neptunes' atypically hushed "In Your Arms Tonight." The album isn't the romp it might have been had Lopes survived, but 3D solidly embodies black pop in a year in which it has lacked a center.