Blaque - Blaque Out! (2001)

Natina Reed and Shamari Fears both moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and met while in high school, with Reed forming Blaque while Fears formed another group called Intrigue, who won a recording contract with Elektra Records. Fears met up with Brandi Williams at a talent show while a member of Intrigue, but left the band shortly afterwards to join up with Reed in Blaque, and Williams joined the group a little later. Reed met Ronald Lopes while singing jingles to earn extra cash, and he introduced her to his sister Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC, who signed the group to her production company, Left Eye Productions. Outside the US the band are known as Blaque Ivory, and their self-titled debut album ('Blaque' in the US and 'Blaque Ivory' elsewhere) broke the top 30 of Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart on its release, reaching number 23, and was later certified platinum by RIAA. The album's lead single '808' was a success in the U.S. reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and earning Gold certification, but the follow-up single 'I Do' was not a success like previous records, only reaching number 73 on the R&B/Hip-Hop single chart. The last single from the album, 'Bring It All To Me', which featured JC Chasez, was a hit song that made the number 5 position on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and topped the Rhythmic charts in late 1999 to early 2000 for six weeks. In 2000, the group starred as cheerleaders in the film 'Bring It On', and they recorded the Shelly Peiken and Guy Roche song 'As If' for the soundtrack that same year. While their self-titled debut album went platinum, a second album called 'Blaque Out', which was set for release in 2001, was shelved when the group was dropped from Columbia Records for unknown reasons, and the video for the first single 'Can't Get It Back' was never released. The album was soon leaked on the internet, and it turned out to be a really good R&B record, which certainly didn't deserve to be so unceremoniously dumped. After Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' death in a car crash in Honduras in 2002, Blaque signed with Elektra Records, and began work on their third album, while an alternate version of the shelved album 'Blaque Out!' was released to iTunes in May 2007, but was later taken down. 'Torch' was completed in 2003, but it too was shelved, although it did finally get an official release in 2019, serving as a belated tribute to Natina Reed, who was killed in a car accident in Atlanta in 2012.  

Track listing

01 Blaque Out
02 Know What's Up
03 Can't Get It Back
04 Thinkin' About It
05 Should I
06 Temperature
07 I Love My Group But ... (Interlude)
08 Bliss
09 I Wanna Be the One
10 Questions
11 Girls Like That
12 This Ain't Us
13 As If
14 Outro