Supernova, the solo album by Lisa Left Eye Lopes, turns 25

The Quietus marked 25 years of Supernova, the first solo album by TLC's Lisa Left Eye Lopes, in a piece published August 14. Lopes had set the release for August 16, 2001, deliberately choosing a date that was both the anniversary of her grandfather's death and what would have been her father's birthday, had he not died ten years earlier.

Arista, her label through TLC, got cold feet and shelved the US release the day it was due; the album still came out in Europe, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, but never in America. The Quietus writes that Lopes retreated after the decision, signing to Suge Knight's Tha Row label under the name N.I.N.A. before Supernova ever saw a wider US release.

Lopes died the following April in a car accident in Honduras, where she had been establishing children's charities, a death The Quietus is careful to say was not caused by the label's decision but followed a chain of events set off by it. The record includes an uncredited posthumous duet with 2Pac, Untouchable, and closes with a song addressed to her late father built around her belief that a new star is born when someone dies.

The Quietus singles out "The Block Party" as the album's high point, built on a Salaam Remi production sampling Earth, Wind & Fire's "Drum Song" and structured around two verses that follow the same character, a girl from Ninth Street named Lisa, at different ages: first as a child excited for a neighborhood party, then as a teenager just as excited but now drawn to "beers, boys and Run DMC."

Several of the album's most personal songs, including "I Believe In Me" and parts of "The Block Party," were co-written with Tracey Horton, who recorded as Pudgee Tha Fat Bastard and had been a friend of 2Pac's. Lopes reportedly asked him to write her verse on "Untouchable" partly so he would have one more chance to work alongside Pac in the studio before Pac's own death years earlier.

The Quietus argues Supernova has aged into something ahead of its time, calling songs like The Block Party still capable of sounding otherworldly a quarter century on, even though the album drew only a scattering of reviews on release.