Soon after Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes died in a car accident last April in Honduras, the surviving members of TLC said they had no plans to replace her. And both Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas insist that more than a year after losing Left Eye, nothing has changed.
“No one can replace Lisa, myself or T-Boz,” Chilli tells AP Radio. “It doesn’t go down like that.”
They say they don’t ever plan to find a new third member for the best-selling female group of all time. Chilli says it’s like losing a part of your body – there’s really no replacing it.
“If you lose a toe, your toe is gone, you just can’t go and pick another one. That’s how deep it is in this group,” Chilli says.
T-Boz says she knows that other groups have replaced members from time to time – but the Grammy-winning trio isn’t like that. She says TLC started with her, Left Eye and Chilli – and they will end that way.
Lopes was killed when the sport utility vehicle she was driving rolled over near Jutiapa, about 150 miles north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Seven other people, including her sister and brother, were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.