RIP: TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes

I was sleeping in fits and starts, tossing and turning. My cell phone rang at 3:15. It was my co-worker Rahman Dukes calling to tell me that TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was reported dead.

My cell phone rang again. It was my co-worker Robert Mancini with the same news, confirmed by Arista.

I logged on and published the story (see “Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes Killed In Car Accident”) at 3:45, and have been updating ever since.

Left Eye was the consumate “MTV Artist,” someone I’ve been covering since I started at MTV News in 1996. I almost felt like I knew her. She was the flamboyant one (she burned down her then-boyfriend now-fiance Andre Rison’s house years ago), the adventurous one (she had been vacationing in Honduras), the fun one (she took a fan to his senior prom a few years ago), the go-getter (she had just inked a solo deal with Suge Knight’s Death Row Records).

So I feel sad. And exhausted. It’ll be a crazy day at work, dealing with all of this. So as soon as I publish the final update (for now), I guess I’ll go run, then go into work, 3 hours of sleep under my belt…