Because she was too sick to fly, Andretta—along with Armon and Chris—had to be driven down to Atlanta by Cholotte Taylor in her little Toyota Corolla. The small contingent stopped at the home of Andretta’s sister’s at the halfway mark so that Andretta could rest. She usually had to be on oxygen by this time; she often had a tank with her. Not only were many of her fingers by this time amputated, but she could barely walk because her legs were so swollen. Cholotte Taylor recalled, “Ann said, ‘I will deal with this pain every day I have to, and I’m going to show up every day I can and live my life and have my career, and I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to Atlanta to be with the girls.’ ”
When Andretta got down to Atlanta, she noticed a distinct difference in the girls’ behavior toward her. Something was off; they weren’t as welcoming as she had expected. Though she felt sure that they were acting on Mathew’s cue, she had Sha Sha Daniels—who’d joined the Houston contingent—conduct her own investigation.
“Beyoncé told me straight out that Mathew had told them he was managing them now, and that Andretta was just going to be helping out a little here and there,” recalled Sha Sha Daniels. “That was most certainly not the way Andretta was looking at things.” When Sha Sha reported back to Andretta what Beyoncé had said, Andretta could barely control her fury. She immediately went to Mathew and demanded an explanation. “This isn’t the time or place for this,” he told her, unhappy about being confronted. He then pulled Andretta aside and the two had an animated discussion in a corner. In the end, they could come to no resolution.
“After she cooled off, she started thinking, ‘Okay, well, maybe it’s not so bad,’ ” recalled Sha Sha Daniels. “ ‘Maybe Mathew is just trying to handle group business. He is the co-manager, after all. Maybe he’s not withholding anything.’ But then we started to look for our table at the showcase, and that’s when it really hit us that things were bad.”
Andretta noticed Beyoncé, LeToya, LaTavia, Kelly, Nicki, and Nina standing in a corner and giggling. “She heard one of them say, ‘It looks like she got more fingers cut off,’ ” Kenny Moore recalled. Andretta had told him this later, adding that she’d felt the girls’ giggling had been directed at her. “That really broke Ann,” he said. “They were young and ignorant and she knew that, but still, they were like daughters to her. Sometimes it was easy to forget that they were just kids, they always acted so adult.”
Things were about to get worse.
“On each table was a centerpiece, and within it were small Barbie dolls, each one painted a mocha brown,” recalled Sha Sha. “Finally, we learned from someone that the reason for the Barbie doll centerpieces was that Mathew and Daryl Simmons had changed the name of the group from Somethin’ Fresh to the Dolls. To do this without consulting Ann? We couldn’t believe it until, sure enough, we heard the announcer say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen—the Dolls!’ Andretta and I just sat there in complete shock and disbelief. Ann started to cry. I said, ‘Ann, don’t cry. Don’t let these people see you cry!’ She said, ‘I can’t help it. Mathew’s stabbed me in the back!’ ”
Actually, Daryl Simmons takes full credit for changing the group’s name to the Dolls. He insists that there was no conspiracy with Mathew to do so. “They looked like little dolls, they were so cute,” he says. “So I changed the name. Simple as that.” Also for the record, Simmons says he doesn’t remember Andretta as even having been in Atlanta! This suggests that she’d been so marginalized by this time, she was all but invisible even to those directly involved with the group. “I certainly never intended to offend her,” he says, “I just didn’t realize she had a proprietary interest in what was going on. My dealings had been with Mathew, not with Andretta. She wasn’t even a factor. I just knew she was very sick, that’s what I knew.”
The showcase was a great success, even if it did get off to a shaky start. The Dolls’ opening act, a twelve-year-old from Indianapolis named Keke Wyatt, “freaked out over something,” Daryl recalled, “and refused to go on.” Daryl had actually been considering adding KeKe to the Dolls, but not after this night. In fact, he was so disappointed in her, he dropped her as an artist. It did serve to remind, though, that it wasn’t always easy for youngsters the Dolls’ age to get up on a stage and be judged by adults. (KeKe Wyatt went on to a successful recording career and, in 2014, starred in “The R&B Divas of Atlanta” reality show with LaTavia Roberson.)
“After we realized that KeKe was not going to deliver, Beyoncé and the girls came through as expected and just blew everyone away,” recalled Daryl Simmons. “I spent a nice sum on this event. I invited all the record company people from labels everywhere. We had costumes and lighting. I went the whole nine [yards] for the girls, and they definitely impressed.”
After the performance, Beyoncé, Kelly, LaTavia, LeToya, Nicki, and Nina gathered around Andretta and Sha Sha. “Oooh, Aunt Sha Sha, I have such a crush on that boy right over there,” Beyoncé said, motioning to young Usher who was standing in a corner winking at her. He was wearing a white t-shirt with a big red heart on it, the logo for the film Poetic Justice; he appeared on the soundtrack with his song “Call Me a Mack.” Sha Sha told Beyoncé to just go over and talk to him. “Oh no! He’s so fine, he makes me nervous,” Beyoncé whispered with a giggle. “He’s gonna be at the barbecue tomorrow at Daryl’s. Maybe I can talk to him then.”
By this time, Andretta seemed very unhappy, staring into space. “Is everything okay, Miss Ann?” Beyoncé asked. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “We all are.”
“I’m fine, baby,” Andretta told the girls as she drew an anxious breath. “Y’all were great. I’m very proud of y’all.”
“Do you really think we were good?” LaTavia asked.
“I do,” Andretta exclaimed.
“You know, we were just as surprised as you by the new name,” Beyoncé said, maybe now realizing how upsetting it was to Andretta. She said that Mathew had told her that these things happen and that there wasn’t much the girls could do about it other than to just go along with it. Andretta said this wasn’t always true. “Sometimes you can speak up,” she told Beyoncé. “In fact, sometimes you must speak up.” She told her that Beyoncé shouldn’t let the men in her life force her into making important decisions. “Your group’s name? That’s important,” she said. “As a woman, you have to be strong, Bey.”
Beyoncé’s gaze turned quizzical. “But my dad said—”
“I know what your dad said,” Andretta told her, cutting her off. “And I’m not saying Mathew is wrong. I’m just saying that sometimes young women have to stand up for ourselves.” She urged them to please not allow the men in their lives to make important decisions for them.
“Yes, ma’am,” Beyoncé said. “I understand.”
“That’s true, baby girl,” Mathew said as he approached. He then took his daughter by the hand. “I want that for you, too,” he said. “You should be strong.” With that, he led his daughter away from Andretta. As she walked off hand in hand with her father, Beyoncé turned and looked over her shoulder at their debilitated “Miss Ann” still in her chair, with the others girls standing around her. There wasn’t much Beyoncé could do in that moment other than what she did: She waved goodbye.
The day after the Atlanta showcase, everyone on the creative team, the parents, and the girls attended a big barbecue at the home of Daryl Simmons. As expected, Usher was present, but he and his mother took their leave before Beyoncé mustered up the courage to talk to him. “Star crossed lovers, I guess,” Sha Sha Daniels observed with a smile. Later during the festivities, out of the blue Beyoncé asked Sha Sha, “Do I have to compete against TLC?” TLC was a very popular girls’ group at the time, comprised of two singers, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas along with rapper Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Simmons had worked with them at LaFace to terrific success. Beyoncé continued, “Because I don’t think I can compete against them. They’re so good.” Sha Sha said, “You just be you, don’t
you worry about what other people are doing.”
This wasn’t the first time the two had had this kind of conversation. About a month earlier, Beyoncé had been at Andretta’s home and was watching television with Sha Sha. Tyra Banks, the gorgeous supermodel, was being interviewed. At twenty, she had just returned to America from France, where she’d appeared in fifteen runway shows for famous designers such as Ralph Lauren, Yves Saint Laurent, and Oscar de la Renta. On the broadcast, she was telling the reporter that she’d just started her own company called Ty Girlz. Beyoncé’s ears perked up when Tyra further explained that she had hired her mother as her manager and her father as financial adviser. “Aunt Sha Sha, do I have to compete against her?” Beyoncé suddenly asked.
“Against Tyra Banks?”
“Yeah, against her,” Beyoncé said.
“I told her, ‘Of course not, Beyoncé, she’s not even in your age range,” Sha Sha Daniels recalled years later. “Beyoncé said, ‘But she’s so beautiful. I can’t possibly compete against that.’ I told her Tyra was a model whereas she was a singer. But besides that, I told her, she didn’t have to compete with anybody. ‘You’re gonna be a big star,’ I told her. I told her I was sure of it, and that she should stop comparing herself to others.”
In Atlanta, when the subject of competition came up again, Sha Sha thought she had satisfied Beyoncé. But apparently the youngster wasn’t ready to let it go, yet. Ten minutes later, Beyoncé walked up to Daryl Simmons and asked him the exact same question: “Do you think I have to compete against TLC?” she asked after he complimented her showcase performance.
Daryl looked down at her, smiled, and said, “No, Bey. You have your own thing going on, so don’t worry about it.”
Sha Sha overheard the conversation and pulled Beyoncé aside. “Now, didn’t I just tell you that you don’t have to compete against TLC?” she whispered at her. Beyoncé looked sheepish. “I know. But I just needed to be sure,” she explained.
Rejections—and Then a Deal!
After the lavish showcase sponsored by Daryl Simmons for the Dolls in Atlanta, he expected the phone to ring off the hook with lucrative offers from record companies. That didn’t happen. “Not one person called,” he remembered. “When I finally did get feedback, it was critical about the girls’ image. The way I had showcased them, they were very sexy. They had low-cut pants, tops that tied at their bare midriffs with their belly buttons showing. Tina had whipped their hair. They were fine, at least in my eyes. But people said, ‘They’re too grown.’ ‘They’re too sexy.’ ‘They’re too young to be up there doing what they’re doing.’ Nobody liked it. I was like, ‘For real? Damn, really?’ I couldn’t understand it. The girls were hurt when I told them. They were crushed, actually.”
Undaunted, Simmons was more determined than ever to place the Dolls with a major record label. “But why can’t we sign with LaFace?” Beyoncé wanted to know. That made the most sense since not only had Simmons cut his teeth with LaFace, but he still had a strong alliance with the company’s owners, L.A. Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. At this same time, though, Reid’s estranged wife, Peri “Pebbles” Reid—the mastermind behind TLC—had just started her own company, Savvy Records. Since Reid and Pebbles were also battling it out at this time in divorce court, Simmons loathed having to choose sides between two good friends.
As it happened, Daryl might not have been able to sign the girls to LaFace anyway. Since Edmonds hadn’t been able to make the Atlanta showcase, Daryl flew to Los Angeles with videotape in hand. He found Edmonds backstage at The Arsenio Hall Show, on which he was about to perform. Daryl popped the video tape into a VCR, sat back, and waited for Kenny’s praise . . . which was not forthcoming. “I don’t get it,” Babyface said as he watched the girls perform. “I’m just not feelin’ it.”
“Really?” Daryl asked. “But that girl in front, Beyoncé. She’s phenomenal.”
“I guess she’s all right,” Babyface said.
“But, damn!” Simmons exclaimed. “That girl can sing so well.”
“She’s okay,” Babyface said, clearly unimpressed.
“I was crushed, because I really wanted his approval,” Simmons recalled. “That was my partner. We’d been best friends for thirty years!”
Edmonds’s lack of interest was a sign of things to come. Clive Davis at Arista felt the same way, saying he wasn’t sure if Beyoncé was a child, a teenager, or a young woman. Then, probably because he couldn’t get a handle on her, he focused his critique on the songs, telling Daryl they weren’t his “A songs.” Meanwhile, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, who had his own label, Bad Boy Records, felt the girls weren’t “hip-hop enough.” He said that the lead singer was pretty good and that he was fascinated by her name. However, in the end he passed, saying Beyoncé wasn’t “edgy” enough and that she and her group needed “more flava” before he would ever be interested. Since they were getting passes from all quarters, Beyoncé began pushing harder than ever for a deal with LaFace. “I just don’t understand why we’re not going over there,” she said, “considering Daryl’s ties, and all.” By this time, Daryl didn’t even have the heart to tell her about Babyface’s apathy.
One executive who was interested in the girls, though, was Sylvia Rhone, chairman and CEO of Elektra Records. The Los Angeles Times hadn’t dubbed her “the most powerful woman in the record business” for no good reason. When she wanted to move, she moved fast. Daryl Simmons recalled, “Sylvia flew down to Atlanta for a private showcase at my studio to meet the girls. Because I was still nervous about the critique that they were too adult and sexy, I conformed a little for Sylvia. I went out and got the girls some jeans, leather jackets, and Timberlands [boots] to make them appear as young as they really were. When they performed for her, Sylvia loved them. She thought Beyoncé was going to be major. That’s what sealed the deal, the fact that she loved Beyoncé. So, at around the end of 1994, I signed the girls to a joint venture/production deal with Elektra Records.
“Sylvia gave us a very good contract, money to operate, record songs, pay producers, and keep the ball rolling in Atlanta,” Simmons continued. “It was my first deal on my own, and I was very happy with it, as was Mathew. The girls were excited too, as you can imagine.”
It certainly now seemed as if all of the hard work on everyone’s part was about to pay off. Beyoncé and Kelly were back in Houston at school when they got the news. “They called our names over the loudspeakers,” Beyoncé recalled. “ ‘Kelly Rowland and Beyoncé Knowles, come to the office!’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’ We went to the office and my dad was there and he said, ‘Y’all got y’all’s record deal! Y’all are gonna move to Atlanta for a while and we’re gonna get y’all tutors!’ ” She said she and Kelly were so stunned, all they could do was stand in place and then . . . scream.
To celebrate the milestone, Mathew and Tina Knowles hosted a “signing party” at their home. Though very few people knew it, the Knowleses were still struggling with their finances, so news of this deal could not have happened at a better time. “There was a lot of excitement about Elektra,” Belfrey Brown recalled. “It was just the shot in the arm everyone needed.”
“Thank you for joining our family for this celebration,” Tina announced to all of the guests, “and thank you all for being a part of us.” As idealistic as ever, she said that all of them, the girls and the creative team and their relations, were part of the Knowleses’ extended family. She made sure to go to each person and spend time with them—Daryl, Andretta, Armon, Chris, Kenny, Belfrey, Sha Sha, Tony Mo.—all of them seemed to matter to her. For his part, Mathew was, as always, focused on Beyoncé. “The pressure is on now more than ever,” he told her in front of witnesses. “You have to be better than ever now, little girl. Do you understand that?”
“But I’m already tryin’ real hard, Daddy,” she said.
Mathew nodded. “I know you are,” he told her. “I’m just sayin’ you can’t slack off now that we got a deal.
In fact, you have to work even harder.”
“I will,” she said. “I promise.”
“Show Business Is a Lot of Things . . .”
As you know, we are really on our way now,” Andretta Tillman enthused. The Dolls were in her home, sitting around the dining room table during another of their group meetings. It was the summer of 1994. “The details of the record deal with Elektra are almost finalized,” Andretta continued. At that, Beyoncé, Kelly, LaTavia, LeToya, Nina, and Nicki began to scream and clap their hands, giving each other high-fives. Andretta continued, “I’m afraid I have some bad news, though.” The girls’ smiling faces turned serious. “It turns out the label wants a four-girl group,” Andretta said. “They don’t want any dancers or rappers,” she added, looking at Nina, Nicki, and LaTavia, all three of whose mouths dropped open. “This means two of you won’t be in the group anymore. They want Beyoncé. They want Kelly. They want LeToya. And one more. Nina, Nicki, and LaTavia,” she concluded, “will have to audition for that fourth spot.”
Becoming Beyoncé Page 16
