Baby it's yours

69. TLC - "Red Light Special" (LaFace Records, 1995)

You know we had to keep it a little extra sexy for song number 69, it's not like we're adults or anything. This has recently become my favorite song on CrazySexyCool and is definitely my favorite thing Babyface has ever written. As the iconic video makes explicit, the ladies are super in-charge on this one, so even when they're offering themselves up fully ("Baby it's yours, all yours") it's clear they're taking great pleasure in their power to do so. "If I move too fast just let me know/'Cause it means you move too slow" is an awesome, sexual bravado-filled bait-and-switch. Chili gets a little more tender on the middle-eight, which sounds more like the hits Babyface was writing for Boyz II Men at the time, and adds depth to (and doesn't at all dilute) the empowerment of T-Boz's verses.

(Oh, and despite the infinitely less cool stand-in in the video, the solo on this song is, indeed, played by Slash)

Cuz he doesn't know what I do

221. TLC - "Creep" (LaFace Records, 1994)

TLC's 1994 ode to infidelity (I feel like that's the kind of intro Rachel Perry would give) is one of the slinkiest, smoothest little jams this side of the ol' Mississip. "Oh-ah, Oh-ah, Oh-ah," however you choose to write it, is one of the great wordless vocal hooks ever heard by these ears. "The 22nd of loneliness" is fantastically bizarre opening line, but T-Boz somehow sings it as it were both perfectly natural and the opening line to one of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century. Dallas Austin's production could not be better suited to the vocals/lyrics, the strings on the chorus adding a gentle touch of paranoia and shiftiness to the whole smooth-ass affair. Purrfect.

(link to the vid here, none of those are embeddable)