3LW In Progress

3LW In Progress

by Benjy Eisen

On September 14, 1998, MTV changed music television history — again — when the network introduced TRL ("Total Request Live”). Originally a most-requested video countdown, the show soon became a lifestyle checkpoint for a generation of teens and preteens, the ultimate after-school special, a place for current pop culture to solidify, its heroes and headliners given their rocket ship to stardom, leaving a trail of stardust in the form of millions of screaming and swooning teenyboppers. In the world of boy bands and girl groups, TRL is the mothership. And the group 3LW has just been given three (very coveted) first class tickets.

Kiely Williams, the group’s founder, agrees: “TRL was actually a milestone in 3LW’s career. When we were first starting out, we were like ‘We’re going to be big when we finally get on TRL’.”

So big, in fact, that while seasoned veterans like Paul Simon and The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh played Hersheypark’s Star Pavilion this summer, the entire pavilion was transformed into just the backstage area on July 24 when 3LW played the stadium as part of the “TRL Tour.”

Not bad for a bunch of little women. Three little women. Hence the name 3LW. They are: Kiely Williams (age 14), Adrienne Bailon (age 18) and Naturi Naughton (17). And I’m trying to find all of them.

The backstage area is filled with so many tour buses, it is absolutely impossible to tell whose is whose. The other acts on the bill are Destiny’s Child, Nelly, Eve, Jessica Simpson and Dream. All hallmarks of the TRL-era. All platinum sellers. All with their own entourage. After a short game of cell tag with their tour manager, I finally spot 3LW leaping off the tour bus where a makeshift game of football is taking place between the dancers. We go back inside the bus and, when I hesitate to sit down on the sofa, the girls give off an immediate and natural “at-ease” vibe. Suddenly I am reminded of weekends back in high school when my friends and I would plop down in a living room and hang out. The girls are still in their stage clothes — Adrienne is in a sequined bikini top, Kiely in a tank with decorated jeans, and Naturi in a white halter with jogging pants. When we start to talk about their stage look, the girls each tell me that they wear the same outfits on stage as they do casually. And I believe them.

“We’re one of the youngest out right now, so our look is very funky, very young, kind of street savvy, very edgy — and different from each other,” explains Naturi, who breaks it down for each of them: Adrienne is “very angelic, sweet, girlie, frilly.” Kiely is “really eclectic, she’s like the wild child, the crazy one of the group.” Naturi describes herself as “very sporty, very chill, a hanging out type, like a sporty diva and that’s just the way I dress.”

The more we talk, the more each of their individual personalities start to show themselves. Adrienne is indeed sweet and girlie. She has glitter around her eyelids and from the second she sits down on the sofa next to me, she seems instantly comfortable, as if we were at a cozy pajama party and about to pop in a movie. Naturi sits on the opposite sofa and leans towards me with her forearms across her knees, as if playing basketball and listening to instructions from her coach. And Kiely can’t sit still. She changes positions often, sometimes interjecting enthusiastically, sometimes looking out the window, and always like a teapot about to blow its lid with boiling water. And yet, all three play off each other perfectly. Listening back to tapes from the interview, it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. Each answer, by any of them, is punctuated with exclamation marks and giggles.

But silly schoolgirls they are not. Well, maybe. But they’re also trainees about to take the girl group torch and run with it for as far as it can carry them. My guess is that it’ll be pretty damned far. For all their inexperience and naivety, they’re using their youth to their advantage. And if they play their cards right, they are setting things up for a maturing career as pop divas. So far, they’re playing their cards right. They stress their individuality from each other, but in talking about the music and the stage show, the individuality that becomes apparent is that of them as a unit versus the other girl groups currently flooding the market. That alone is worth at least a couple aces, with several spare ones up their sleeves.

They know that there are a lot of other girl groups in the game. And while they show respect for the current queens, Adrienne confidently plays 3LW’s hand: “We do get the comparisons to Destiny’s Child, but we’re a lot different from them. We’re a lot younger and we actually sing a blend of hip-hop, pop and R&B. And we don’t have one singer, we all sing. And we have three personalities that we showcase. And we dance.”(“We dance hard!” yells Kiely).

3LW’s motto is “Keeping It Live” which Naturi defines as another major difference between 3LW and some of the other acts on the TRL Tour: “We really dance hardcore. We’re keeping it real on the stage when we dance and we’re singing at the same time. A lot of girl groups aren’t doing that. They may do little steps here and there and not sing, or they may just sing and not do any steps. We sing live. It’s very important to us to give our audience a live show.”

Adds Adrienne, “If they wanted to listen to the album, they could just stay at home and listen to the album.” Which might not be a bad thing, either. 3LW’s sound is a fresh take on popular music. Their youth allows them to usher in the next generation, which for now is all their own. “We realized that we didn’t have pop music and we didn’t have R&B music, it was a mixture of both and so we called that ‘Ghetto-Pop’ because we sing pop music but we put a ghetto twist on it.”

Having first formed the group less than two years ago, 3LW already has a platinum album, a hit single (“No More”), and the true taste of next-generation success: a Pepsi commercial. The girls also have a national campaign with the clothing store Wet Seal and Asphalt Jeans involving a decorate-your-own-jeans contest in which the winner gets to fly to Hawaii to see 3LW perform in their self-made gear (“So it’s so dope!” says Naturi.)

All this and all at lightning speed. The group is about to head back into the studio for album number two. Adrienne, who never hesitates in plugging upcoming 3LW product, gets visibly excited when talking about the next album, “I think there definitely is going to be a slight change. I mean, we have matured from our first album and now, and I think people are going to see that growth. You’ve seen ‘Little Women’ on the first album. Now you’re going to see the ‘Women’ part on the second album. And I think we’re definitely going to show everybody’s different flavor more.” Without so much as a pause or a breath of air, she adds, “I think it’s going to be hot — I think you guys should look out for it!”

World, meet 3LW. 3LW, world.