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No Scrubs” vs. “No Pigeons”: The Battle of the Sexes That Shook Radio in 1999
After R&B supergroup TLC dropped “No Scrubs,” a little-known New York rap group called Sporty Thievz responded with “No Pigeons.” It launched a gender war on and off the airwaves, amplified by two trios, two songs, one beat, and zero apologies.
By Julian Kimble Jul 30, 2019, 6:30am EDTSean Mack
Share this story
Welcome to 1999 Music Week, a celebration of one of the most interesting, vivid, varied music years ever. Join us as we count down the best singles and albums of the year, remember the days of scrubs and the girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch, and argue about which albums stood above the rest.
“Ascrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly / And is also known as a buster / Always talkin’ about what he wants / And just sits on his broke ass.”
It took only four lines, razor-sharp in their assessment of certain men, to start a war.
In February 1999, TLC—Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes—cast the first stone in what would become a battle of the sexes with the song “No Scrubs.” The first single from the Atlanta-based R&B trio’s third album, FanMail, was a playful-yet-scathing evisceration of good-for-nothing men. With a blunt chorus, TLC let the world know not only who and what they wouldn’t tolerate, but why.
By this point, TLC’s previous album, 1994’s CrazySexyCool, had gone diamond. “No Scrubs” wasn’t as big as the ubiquitous juggernaut “Waterfalls,” but it gave TLC another huge hit following a four-year hiatus. It also gave women an anthem, empowering them to crush any overconfident bum who approached. If you were a poser, a philanderer, or a deadbeat, they were definitely talking to you. Despite the late Left Eye explaining to Jay Leno that being a scrub had less to do with social status than lack of principle (“You also have the executivescrub,” she noted), the word burrowed under men’s skin as the song’s immense popularity wedged it into popular lexicon. Writing for The New York Times in 1999, Douglas Century described the resulting friction: “To TLC fans, ‘No Scrubs’ is an anthem of female self-sufficiency and self-respect, a rejection of men with no motivation. But some African-American men consider it denigrating.”
In the shock of the year, the song placed men and women at odds. “Some of these successful women in hip-hop have a lot of money, and it gets to be easy when you have a lot of money to demand what you expect,” journalist and author Danyel Smith told the Hartford Courant in 1999. “Men are trying to figure out what it means to interact with a woman who is independent.”
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The Ringer’s 40 Best Singles and Albums of 1999
1999 was one of the most interesting music years ever. We’re celebrating that by definitively ranking its top songs and albums, 20 years later.
Some men interpreted “No Scrubs” as an airstrike targeting their egos. “It’s interesting that men took offense to it, but that’s how you know it hit a nerve—especially with the scrubs,” says Kim Osorio, former editor-in-chief of The Source. The song was triggering: I’m a bum just because I’m riding shotgun? I need money to approach you? Who are you to judge me? That was the biggest offense to these dudes: Certain women, to let them tell it, had no business using the word. Soon after came the official male response. It arrived in the form of a Timberland boot hurled defiantly from Yonkers, New York.
In May 1999, the hip-hop trio Sporty Thievz—consisting of Kirk “King Kirk” Howell, Shaarod “Big Dubez” Ford, and Marlon “Marlon Brando” Bryant—released a brash rebuttal: “No Pigeons.” The rappers, whose debut album arrived the previous summer, had earned a minor buzz in New York for clever rhymes that showcased a brazen sense of humor. “No Pigeons,” which borrowed the same instrumental Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs crafted for TLC, was a testament to Sporty Thievz’s sensibilities: They wouldn’t be taken advantage of, nor would they be derided by anyone whose own life was in shambles. They held a mirror up to women who dared to call them “scrubs” and returned fire with a dig of their own: “A pigeon is a girl who be walkin’ by / My rimmed-up blue brand new sparklin’ five / Her feet hurt so you know she want a ride / But she frontin’ like she can’t say hi.”
Hitching their wagon to one of the year’s biggest songs was savvy, but Sporty Thievz had no idea their counterpunch would mushroom into a hit of its own. “No Pigeons” topped both the Billboard Hot Rap Singles and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Sales charts, peaking at no. 12 on the Hot 100. “It became so big that women were loving it,” says longtime New York radio DJ and Notorious B.I.G. affiliate Mister Cee. “You had women out there like, ‘Well, they ain’t talking about me.’” “No Pigeons” absorbed the power of “No Scrubs,” helping to create one of the more fascinating pop culture moments of 1999. “One ignited the girls, one ignited the guys,” says DJ Funkmaster Flex of NYC’s Hot 97, where “No Pigeons” first became a phenomenon.
Long before social media, where today’s Hot Girl vs. City Boy competition has ballooned into an ongoing Twitter repartee, “No Scrubs” vs. “No Pigeons” pitted an R&B supergroup against a crew of rap underdogs. But for the record, the battle was never about TLC facing off with Sporty Thievz. This was something far more grand: a never-ending war between men and women amplified by two trios, two songs, one beat, and zero apologies.
Both “No Scrubs” and “No Pigeons” were created during down times for their respective groups. Xscape singers-songwriters Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Harris were also on a break from their own R&B quartet when, using an instrumental from Briggs, they created a demo of “No Scrubs” for a side project. Executives at TLC’s label, the now-defunct LaFace Records, had other plans. “We brought it to life on our own song for ourselves, and then the producer She’kspere had played it for some of the powers that be at LaFace, and they immediately were like, we want this song for TLC,” Harris told Rolling Stone in 2014.
Chilli recognized the song’s potential the first time she heard it. “I knew immediately,” she told Billboard in 2014. “I went, ‘This is a smash.’ And I was like, ‘I gotta get it.’” Released as a single by TLC on February 2, 1999, “No Scrubs” took off almost immediately, landing atop the Billboard Hot 100 in April and remaining there for four weeks. Pop music was coalescing into something new as the decade drew to a close, and a specific kind of earworm with clear traces of R&B influence was all the rage—check Britney Spears’s dominant “...Baby One More Time” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.”In addition to TLC’s bona fides, “No Scrubs” had the right mix of R&B aesthetics and pop’s light, inoffensive sound to attract wider audiences. The sweeping success of “No Scrubs” and FanMail reaffirmed TLC’s position as one of R&B’s preeminent acts after a long break.
While TLC was once again flourishing, Sporty Thievz was searching for a niche. The group’s first offering, Street Cinema, was a concept album: street tales told with sharp wit in vivid fashion. King Kirk says the group wanted “Spy Hunter,” a lurid account of espionage, to be the album’s lead single, but their label, Ruffhouse Records, and its distributor, Columbia Records, preferred the he-said-she-said banter of “Cheapskate (You Ain’t Gettin’ Nada).” This disagreement nearly shut everything down before Street Cinema’s release on August 18, 1998: “I said, ‘If y’all do ‘Cheapskate,’ I’m not coming to the video shoot. And everybody looked at me and said, ‘Alright, there won’t be any Sporty Thievz then,’” King Kirk remembers.
King Kirk had a change of heart, and Sporty Thievz moved forward with “Cheapskate” as Street Cinema’s lead single. The song was a mission statement informing women that they couldn’t get over on the group. Big Dubez raps at the top of the second verse: “Can you what? Nah, I ain’t the herb on the ave / I don’t understand them three words, ‘Can I have?’” The catchy hook reinforced the group’s position re: not being anyone’s meal ticket or an easy come-up. “You ain’t gettin’ nadaaa from us / Not even a dollaaa from us.”
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18365890/Classic_Sporty.jpg)
Sporty Thievz. From left to right: Marlon Brando, King Kirk, Big Dubez.
Courtesy of King Kirk
Sporty Thievz’s style was conversational—listening to “Cheapskate” felt like hearing them roast girls live from a stoop in Yonkers—but their audacious sense of humor didn’t translate into much commercial success. “Cheapskate” reached only no. 31 on the Hot Rap Singles chart; the remix, dubbed “Even Cheaper,”peaked at no. 27. Further complicating their situation were issues with Ruffhouse Records that left the group in limbo. “Something was going on, internally, with the label,” King Kirk says. “We were getting held in the middle because of that, so we were trying to get released.” Their lifeline? An unexpected gift from the mixtape gods.
After R&B supergroup TLC dropped “No Scrubs,” a little-known New York rap group called Sporty Thievz responded with “No Pigeons.” It launched a gender war on and off the airwaves, amplified by two trios, two songs, one beat, and zero apologies.
By Julian Kimble Jul 30, 2019, 6:30am EDTSean Mack
Share this story
Welcome to 1999 Music Week, a celebration of one of the most interesting, vivid, varied music years ever. Join us as we count down the best singles and albums of the year, remember the days of scrubs and the girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch, and argue about which albums stood above the rest.
“Ascrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly / And is also known as a buster / Always talkin’ about what he wants / And just sits on his broke ass.”
It took only four lines, razor-sharp in their assessment of certain men, to start a war.
In February 1999, TLC—Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes—cast the first stone in what would become a battle of the sexes with the song “No Scrubs.” The first single from the Atlanta-based R&B trio’s third album, FanMail, was a playful-yet-scathing evisceration of good-for-nothing men. With a blunt chorus, TLC let the world know not only who and what they wouldn’t tolerate, but why.
By this point, TLC’s previous album, 1994’s CrazySexyCool, had gone diamond. “No Scrubs” wasn’t as big as the ubiquitous juggernaut “Waterfalls,” but it gave TLC another huge hit following a four-year hiatus. It also gave women an anthem, empowering them to crush any overconfident bum who approached. If you were a poser, a philanderer, or a deadbeat, they were definitely talking to you. Despite the late Left Eye explaining to Jay Leno that being a scrub had less to do with social status than lack of principle (“You also have the executivescrub,” she noted), the word burrowed under men’s skin as the song’s immense popularity wedged it into popular lexicon. Writing for The New York Times in 1999, Douglas Century described the resulting friction: “To TLC fans, ‘No Scrubs’ is an anthem of female self-sufficiency and self-respect, a rejection of men with no motivation. But some African-American men consider it denigrating.”
In the shock of the year, the song placed men and women at odds. “Some of these successful women in hip-hop have a lot of money, and it gets to be easy when you have a lot of money to demand what you expect,” journalist and author Danyel Smith told the Hartford Courant in 1999. “Men are trying to figure out what it means to interact with a woman who is independent.”
The Ringer’s 40 Best Singles and Albums of 1999
1999 was one of the most interesting music years ever. We’re celebrating that by definitively ranking its top songs and albums, 20 years later.
Some men interpreted “No Scrubs” as an airstrike targeting their egos. “It’s interesting that men took offense to it, but that’s how you know it hit a nerve—especially with the scrubs,” says Kim Osorio, former editor-in-chief of The Source. The song was triggering: I’m a bum just because I’m riding shotgun? I need money to approach you? Who are you to judge me? That was the biggest offense to these dudes: Certain women, to let them tell it, had no business using the word. Soon after came the official male response. It arrived in the form of a Timberland boot hurled defiantly from Yonkers, New York.
In May 1999, the hip-hop trio Sporty Thievz—consisting of Kirk “King Kirk” Howell, Shaarod “Big Dubez” Ford, and Marlon “Marlon Brando” Bryant—released a brash rebuttal: “No Pigeons.” The rappers, whose debut album arrived the previous summer, had earned a minor buzz in New York for clever rhymes that showcased a brazen sense of humor. “No Pigeons,” which borrowed the same instrumental Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs crafted for TLC, was a testament to Sporty Thievz’s sensibilities: They wouldn’t be taken advantage of, nor would they be derided by anyone whose own life was in shambles. They held a mirror up to women who dared to call them “scrubs” and returned fire with a dig of their own: “A pigeon is a girl who be walkin’ by / My rimmed-up blue brand new sparklin’ five / Her feet hurt so you know she want a ride / But she frontin’ like she can’t say hi.”
Hitching their wagon to one of the year’s biggest songs was savvy, but Sporty Thievz had no idea their counterpunch would mushroom into a hit of its own. “No Pigeons” topped both the Billboard Hot Rap Singles and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Sales charts, peaking at no. 12 on the Hot 100. “It became so big that women were loving it,” says longtime New York radio DJ and Notorious B.I.G. affiliate Mister Cee. “You had women out there like, ‘Well, they ain’t talking about me.’” “No Pigeons” absorbed the power of “No Scrubs,” helping to create one of the more fascinating pop culture moments of 1999. “One ignited the girls, one ignited the guys,” says DJ Funkmaster Flex of NYC’s Hot 97, where “No Pigeons” first became a phenomenon.
Long before social media, where today’s Hot Girl vs. City Boy competition has ballooned into an ongoing Twitter repartee, “No Scrubs” vs. “No Pigeons” pitted an R&B supergroup against a crew of rap underdogs. But for the record, the battle was never about TLC facing off with Sporty Thievz. This was something far more grand: a never-ending war between men and women amplified by two trios, two songs, one beat, and zero apologies.
Both “No Scrubs” and “No Pigeons” were created during down times for their respective groups. Xscape singers-songwriters Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Harris were also on a break from their own R&B quartet when, using an instrumental from Briggs, they created a demo of “No Scrubs” for a side project. Executives at TLC’s label, the now-defunct LaFace Records, had other plans. “We brought it to life on our own song for ourselves, and then the producer She’kspere had played it for some of the powers that be at LaFace, and they immediately were like, we want this song for TLC,” Harris told Rolling Stone in 2014.
Chilli recognized the song’s potential the first time she heard it. “I knew immediately,” she told Billboard in 2014. “I went, ‘This is a smash.’ And I was like, ‘I gotta get it.’” Released as a single by TLC on February 2, 1999, “No Scrubs” took off almost immediately, landing atop the Billboard Hot 100 in April and remaining there for four weeks. Pop music was coalescing into something new as the decade drew to a close, and a specific kind of earworm with clear traces of R&B influence was all the rage—check Britney Spears’s dominant “...Baby One More Time” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.”In addition to TLC’s bona fides, “No Scrubs” had the right mix of R&B aesthetics and pop’s light, inoffensive sound to attract wider audiences. The sweeping success of “No Scrubs” and FanMail reaffirmed TLC’s position as one of R&B’s preeminent acts after a long break.
While TLC was once again flourishing, Sporty Thievz was searching for a niche. The group’s first offering, Street Cinema, was a concept album: street tales told with sharp wit in vivid fashion. King Kirk says the group wanted “Spy Hunter,” a lurid account of espionage, to be the album’s lead single, but their label, Ruffhouse Records, and its distributor, Columbia Records, preferred the he-said-she-said banter of “Cheapskate (You Ain’t Gettin’ Nada).” This disagreement nearly shut everything down before Street Cinema’s release on August 18, 1998: “I said, ‘If y’all do ‘Cheapskate,’ I’m not coming to the video shoot. And everybody looked at me and said, ‘Alright, there won’t be any Sporty Thievz then,’” King Kirk remembers.
King Kirk had a change of heart, and Sporty Thievz moved forward with “Cheapskate” as Street Cinema’s lead single. The song was a mission statement informing women that they couldn’t get over on the group. Big Dubez raps at the top of the second verse: “Can you what? Nah, I ain’t the herb on the ave / I don’t understand them three words, ‘Can I have?’” The catchy hook reinforced the group’s position re: not being anyone’s meal ticket or an easy come-up. “You ain’t gettin’ nadaaa from us / Not even a dollaaa from us.”
Sporty Thievz. From left to right: Marlon Brando, King Kirk, Big Dubez.
Courtesy of King Kirk
Sporty Thievz’s style was conversational—listening to “Cheapskate” felt like hearing them roast girls live from a stoop in Yonkers—but their audacious sense of humor didn’t translate into much commercial success. “Cheapskate” reached only no. 31 on the Hot Rap Singles chart; the remix, dubbed “Even Cheaper,”peaked at no. 27. Further complicating their situation were issues with Ruffhouse Records that left the group in limbo. “Something was going on, internally, with the label,” King Kirk says. “We were getting held in the middle because of that, so we were trying to get released.” Their lifeline? An unexpected gift from the mixtape gods.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18365897/20190719_201036.jpg)
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