TLC Didn't Diss Rihanna, Blame Interview Edit: "We Never Mentioned Any Artist's Name

As it turns out, the ladies of TLC didn't
actually diss Rihanna for showing too
much skin!
Last week during a guest appearance on
Sunrise Australia, Chilli and T-Boz spoke
proudly about becoming the "biggest
selling girl group of all-time with our
clothes on." T-Boz also seemingly threw
some shade (at Rihanna, or so we
thought at the time), saying, "Every time
I see you, you don't have to be naked!"
But T-Boz and Chilli didn't mean to
make RiRi feel unpretty with their
words! During an interview with Yahoo
Music, T-Boz claimed the comment was
taken "out of context...manipulated and
spliced up" to make it seem like she and
Chilli were dissing the often scantily clad
singer.
"I was talking about television shows,"
she explained. "Then you hear me
saying something like, 'Every time we
see you, you don't have to be naked,'
and then [Sunrise] put [Rihanna's]
picture up! How can I even talk about
something I didn't see or care about?"
Chilli made the point that neither she
nor T-Boz "mentioned any artist's name"
during the interview. The ladies were
asked if they had seen the completely
see-through outfit Rihanna wore at the
2014 CFDA Awards, but T-Boz explained,
"I said no, 'cause we're over here
touring. I didn't know there was an
awards show, and I had no idea what
she wore."
The TLC gals were trying to send a
message that, "It's cool if you don't
wanna wear clothes. Do what you want,
we don't care." But they also wanted
the next generation of girls to know they
should not "have to feel forced" to get
naked to be successful coming up in the
business.
As for Rihanna, who was understandably
none too pleased when she thought the
girl group members were trashing her
for no good reason? Chilli did wish she'd
handled the fabricated feud differently.
"What is not cool is if we have a problem
with an artist, or an artist has a problem
with us, come to us directly, talk to us,"
she said. "Don't start a Twitter war and
all this kind of stuff. That's silly."
One of the Twitter tactic RiRi used was
posting a throwback shot of the TLC
ladies topless, but as T-Boz pointed out,
this was "the one picture in 22 years of
our whole career, and it was for breast
cancer awareness. If we do something
like that, there's a good reason behind
it.