"I'm Good at Being Bad" is a song recorded by American girl groupTLC for their third album FanMail. It was released as a promotional single when "No Scrubs" was distributed to radio. Despite not being commercially released, the track peaked within the top 40 on the BillboardHot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The song is characterized by its contrasting alternation of soft romantic melody and hard rap with explicit lyrics, as performed by Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and others of the group.
Jimmy Jam encouraged Watkins to hum the melody while playing the beat in the recording booth, which was different from her routine of listening to the beat and writing out the lyrics. Watkins admitted that the technique influenced her as a songwriter. She also attempted to convince Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes to rap the pre-chorus herself, but Lopes insisted that Watkins' thicker voice was better suited for the track.[1]
The original album version interpolates the Donna Summer song "Love to Love You Baby". Later pressings of the explicit version of album removed the interpolation, shortening the song's length by a minute, though the interpolation remained on the edited versions of the album.[citation needed] The song also used a sample by American funk band War's 1972 song "Slippin' Into Darkness".[citation needed] Lopes' rap verse was included in the uncut version of the "Unpretty" music video.[citation needed]
Commercial performance
The song was distributed to radio stations as a promotional single during the release of their first single "No Scrubs" on January 23, 1999.[citation needed] On the BillboardHot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart dated July 3, 1999, "I'm Good at Being Bad" peaked at number 38, where it spent 18 weeks on the chart.[3]
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