Pebbles on TLC: ‘The Money Flows Down From the Top; That’s Who’s Got the Money’

While the VH1 biopic Crazy Sexy Cool: The TLC Story got rave reviews and a record 4 million viewers for the network, there’s one person who was not a fan. That was TLC’s former manager, Perri “Pebbles” Reid, who says she was falsely portrayed in the film, where she was played by Rochelle Aytes. Pebbles has made the rounds of the talk show and radio circuits professing her innocence in the bankruptcy proceedings and the miserly financial compensation that TLC, once the biggest selling girl group of all time, received.

Accusations of cheating and lying have flown back and forth between Pebbles and the group’s surviving members Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and “Rozonda “Chili” Thomas. (Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes died in a car accident in 2000.) Ashley Reid, Pebbles’ now grown daughter, threatened to confront Chili, who she called everything but a child of God in a now deleted Ustream post. Thomas and Watkins, executive producers on the movie maintain that they are telling the truth. Pebbles says she treated the group like daughters and that their financial issues were their own fault.

You can listen above to what she had to say and see how credible you believe she is (we’re on the fence here). Here’s what she had to say this morning on the Tom Joyner Morning Show.

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On her portrayal in Crazysexycool: The TLC Story. It is not a true story as VH1 and TLC has claimed. A lot of these things did not happen. Finally, VH1 has come forward and made a statement to me in a letter that it was a fictional portrayal that was done with actors and scripts and by no means was meant to try to recreate any historical event and any reasonable person would have never taken it as the truth.

On why no one has defended her since TLC’s allegations first surfaced years ago.I haven’t managed a lot of people. I have helped a lot of people. I have opened the door for a tremendous amount of people and helped get LaFace Records on the map. I can’t speak for other people. I can only speak for what I know to be true. What I can’t do here is to try to get people to believe something that VH1 said was a true story all the time.

On her daughter, Ashley, speaking up on her behalf. My girl is a good girl. She’s trying to protect her momma. I don’t commend the violence piece. But I commend that my daughter said we don’t need nobody else to speak up for my momma. People are afraid to talk. They don’t want to get involved. Some people still got checks on the table, others forget just don’t care. They forget about what you’ve done for them. I’m sure I’m not the only person that happened to.

On the alleged affair that Rozonda “Chili” Thomas had with Pebbles’ then-husband, L.A. Reid, who was running LaFace Records at the time. First and foremost, if you’re asking me if I believe it, absolutely. If you’re asking me if I knew about it at the time, absolutely not.

On the specific parts of the movie that are untrue. A lot of it is not true. I made 9 pages of notes. As for the $25 (that she allegedly paid the girls) that’s ridiculous. Chile, please. They got far greater than that. We had a year of development prior to them coming out. I have paperwork. Everybody forgets. I can’t really speak to that. I honor my agreements. I do have a confidentiality agreement and it pertains to certain, specific things. You’re not supposed to talk about those things. My contracts were a fair new artist contract for a production company. They got more points than me. You can’t talk about dollars and numbers.

On why she appears so evasive about specifics related to TLC’s allegations about finances. I’ve given a lot of answers to a lot of questions. I just gave an interview yesterday that kinda broke down where the money is. You have BMG, you have Clive Davis with Arista Records, you have LaFace and then you have the artist down here at the bottom level and the production company. I’d like to think that I could be that powerful and influential that everybody thinks that I was had the money bag, but no. The money flows down from the way top, that’s whose got the money. I got a small portion, the girls got a portion but in understanding how the business works the money, money, went to the bigger companies, please believe it. I was the only woman at the table and the only one who got thrown under the bus. They made a decision to go with L.A. Reid and he induced my contract. In a dispute, if you have some kind of issue or division going on, they can take your group. After the first record, the group was taken and I was no longer involved from then on, didn’t make decisions about anything they did. I didn’t own the group. It didn’t go like that. That’s a soundbite.

On why she won’t be talking any more (maybe) after this interview. I’m not talking to y’all no more because y’all not trying to get no understanding about the real truth and how it really went down. I’m trying to tell you something and it’s almost going to be my last interview in this way, except doing it a long-form way where I can explain it better. It comes down from the top so it’s just too hard to explain it in this manner. But please believe they deserved to have more and so did I in something that we created together. But that comes down from the top.

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