TLC - What About Your Friends

What this video is

Released August 21, 1992, 'What About Your Friends' arrived as TLC's third consecutive top-10 single from their debut album Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip on LaFace Records, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Hot R&B Singles chart. The video documents TLC at their most raw and unpolished — before CrazySexyCool elevated their image — presenting three young Atlanta women in baggy Cross Colours streetwear,…

Why it matters

A key document of New Jack Swing's evolution into the Atlanta R&B-hip-hop hybrid sound of the early 1990s. TLC's bold visual identity — street-coded fashion, choreography over glamour, female solidarity messaging — helped redefine the possibilities of the R&B girl group video format and prefigured…

The director

American music video director, film director, and VJ born in London and raised in Queens, New York. Co-created and co-hosted Video Music Box with Ralph McDaniels, one of the first television programs to feature hip-hop videos, launching in 1983. Studied film…