Becoming Beyoncé

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “Come on! Let’s move it,” a doctor said as the team began to shove the gurney into an elevator. “We have to get this patient upstairs.”

  After the medical team finally got Andretta back to intensive care, Pat and Cholotte gathered in an outside waiting room with Andretta’s mother, Effie Lee Brown. Through a glass window, the three frightened women watched helplessly as the medics worked feverishly on their loved one. Though they couldn’t actually see Andretta because she was hidden by those trying to save her, they could certainly hear her. “I can’t breathe,” Andretta screamed out in agony. “I can’t breathe!”

  Vigil

  Beyoncé couldn’t believe it when Tina told her that Andretta had died. Of course, she had long before realized that her mentor was very near death. Still, she somehow imagined that Andretta would pull through. Now, however, she had to face the harsh reality that it was not to be. “Maybe she’s in a better place,” she tried to reason. “How much does one person have to suffer? It just isn’t fair.”

  By the time the Knowleses and Kelly got to Andretta’s the next day, her home was filled with grieving friends and family members. LaTavia and her mother, Cheryl, were already present, as were LeToya and her mom, Pam. “Everybody was there,” Kenny Moore, Andretta’s good friend and business partner, recalled. “All the girls, all their parents, and everyone who ever knew Andretta. Andretta’s mom, Effie, was there. There was a hug fest all the way from the front lawn and driveway to the inside of the house. People were standing around, crying. I went in to check on Armon and Chris. They were in a daze. I was hugging everybody, trying not to cry. I hugged Mathew, I hugged Tina, and some of the others. I hugged Beyoncé.”

  “Everyone was very upset and emotional,” recalled Andretta’s brother To-to. “And in his own way, I guess Mathew was, but some of his actions made us question it. His whole thing was that he was looking for any management papers and agreements between him and my sister. He was pushing hard for them, until finally my brother [Larrell] told him, ‘No! You can’t have them. We’ll get back to you later about them.’ Mathew said, ‘Okay,’ and then he took off.” (Pat Felton says that some of the documents Mathew was looking for were under Andretta’s bed.) Mathew gave a conflicting version of events in later testimony.

  The wake a couple days later was, as expected, exceedingly sad. Everyone Andretta had touched over the years was present and grieving, including some who’d not been in the picture for some time. Pat Felton was inconsolable, as were Cholotte Taylor and Cheryl Mitchell. Tina looked as if she was deeply in prayer. Armon and Chris did their best to hold it together, but of course it was difficult. Now they would have to be uprooted and move to Tyler, where they would live with their uncle Keith.

  The first people Kenny Moore saw when he arrived at the funeral home were the girls—Beyoncé, Kelly, LaTavia, and LeToya. Before they went inside, Kenny hugged each one. Beyoncé held on for a long time. After she broke away, Kenny looked at her and said two simple words: “Finish it.” She shook her head in the affirmative. “Yes, sir,” she said, wiping away a tear. “We don’t stop.”

  “She and I always had a special communication,” Kenny recalled, “and she knew what I meant: Finish this goddamn thing. Be the greatest group in the world. Be the biggest star there is. Whatever you do, please don’t let Andretta’s death be in vain.”

  “Beyoncé cried her heart out, as did all the girls,” Kenny remembered. “I started to really get it that they were just innocents in all of the games-playing that had been going on, that it was really the adults the whole time, arguing and fighting over shit. The girls were just pawns. They’d been manipulated into thinking one thing, then another, then another. I remember how upset Ann had been in Atlanta. But the girls’ emotion told me how they really felt about her.”

  Andretta would be buried the next day, in Tyler. “Destiny’s Child was supposed to sing at the funeral, but they didn’t show up,” recalled Armon Tillman. “Their names were in the program. We had been one big happy family, but I started thinking when they didn’t show that maybe things would be changing now that my mom was gone.” During the service, “No, No, No” was played in lieu of the girls singing. It’s not known why they didn’t show up and sing, if that had indeed been the intention.

  Kenny says he had an unfortunate disagreement with Mathew at one of the services over some of the girls’ Columbia/Sony masters. Apparently they had been in Andretta’s possession before she died. “After that argument, which took place at probably the most inappropriate place—’Dretta’s service—I was done with Mathew Knowles,” says Kenny Moore. “I would make sure he’d get the masters as promised, but as far as having him in my life . . . no.” (It should be noted here that Mathew seems to have no memory of this altercation. In a deposition he would give on January 29, 2002, when asked if he knew Kenny Moore, he would respond with a succinct, “No.”)

  Indeed, in the weeks after the Tillman services, Kenny began to distance himself from just about everyone connected with Destiny’s Child. “The wake, that was the last time I ever saw Mathew, Tina, Beyoncé, Kelly . . . any of them,” he said. “My last memory of Beyoncé is of her crying as they were carrying Ann’s casket out of the church. After those services, Mathew took over. Those of us who loved her and worked with Andretta had to accept that things would now be changing. Now Mathew would be the one holding the keys to the kingdom. With that being the case, all I knew for sure was that I wanted the hell out of the kingdom. Therefore I chose my own destiny; I walked away from all of it and never looked back. It was painful, but necessary.”

  “Everything changed when my mom died,” Armon Tillman confirmed. “It was, like, that’s it . . . time to move on. Chris and I moved out of the city to live with our uncle, so no more Sunday dinners at the Knowleses. No more hanging out with the girls. No more basketball games with Mathew. But, worse yet, no phone calls from any of them to see how we were doing. Nothing. It felt as if they just went on with their lives and forgot all about us. It was sudden, too, not a gradual fadeout, just—boom! Over. Done. We would call and leave messages, but no one would return our calls. As a fourteen-year-old kid, you’re just left to think, was any of it real? Or was the whole thing just one great big show?”2

  Their Time Has Come

  After the services for Andretta Tillman, Beyoncé was troubled by questions about her mentor. She didn’t fully understand the troubled history between Andretta and her father, and she felt she was now old enough to have a more complete grasp of it. She called upon someone she trusted implicitly, her producer Lonnie Jackson. “Tell me everything,” she said. “I need to know.”

  “Your father is a good man,” Lonnie told her. “But, yes, he and Andretta had their problems.”

  “I told her the truth,” Lonnie would later recall. “I tried to explain what happened and I tried to be as fair about it as I could. I felt that if she trusted me enough to ask, I owed her the truth. I told her that Mathew always had her best interests at heart, that he loved her and that whatever he did, he did for her. But I was clear that she also owed a great and incredible debt to Andretta. I would never want her to think otherwise, because the truth is the truth. I told her that none of it would have happened if not for Ann.”

  “Deborah Laday and Denise Seals started it,” he told her, “and then Miss Ann, me, and Tony Mo. picked it up and rehearsed you girls every day, coaching you, recording you, and doing everything we could think of to help make your dreams come true. And all of that was way before your dad.”

  Beyoncé was grateful to Lonnie and said she knew she could count on him “to keep it real with me.” She said she loved him, and he told her he felt the same way about her. In the end, she decided that her father’s actions had always been in her best interest. After all, he was her greatest champion. She couldn’t very well expect everyone to agree with him all the time. She just had to have faith in him and realize that his relationship with Andretta was his own—and maybe none of her business a
nyway.

  By the end of June, there wasn’t any more time for serious reflection, because Destiny’s Child’s career was about to blow up. Doubtless, Beyoncé could have used more time to grieve, but it was just not possible. The girls were about to become incredibly busy, which would actually provide a much-needed distraction.

  On July 1, 1997, the first Destiny’s Child song was released. Called “Killing Time” and written by D’Wayne Wiggins and Taura Stinson, it was issued on the soundtrack to Men in Black on Columbia/Sony. It was ironic that “Killing Time” would be the act’s first release, because the dramatic, yearning ballad with its sweeping string arrangement expresses a venerable musicality that’s not typical of a young vocal group. At its elegant center are the earnest vocals of a young and ambitious Beyoncé Knowles as she eagerly develops her style and approach with every note.

  Taura Stinson, who would go on to marry Lonnie Jackson, recalled, “D’Wayne had a studio in Richmond, California, which is where we recorded the song and where I first met the girls. Before I got there, D’Wayne said, ‘This one girl, Beyoncé, looks so much like you, you won’t believe it. [In fact, Taura and Beyoncé looked so much alike, Mathew eventually began to refer to Taura as “my third daughter.”] He said all of the girls were so cute, and so country. When I finally met her, the first thing Beyoncé said to me was, ‘I love “Killing Time.” I can’t wait to get into it.’ She was so interested and invested. She had a couple different ways she wanted to end the song, so we tried them all out, and, honestly, one was as good as the other. I was really impressed with her skill level, especially given her age. I also remember her sitting behind the console in the studio giving the others their parts to sing. She was very . . . motivating, I guess is the word.”

  At the time, Randy Jackson (who has more recently become famous as a judge on American Idol) was the A&R director at Columbia/Sony. He and Lonnie Jackson were friends, both hailing from the Bay Area. During a meeting with Randy, Lonnie played him “Killing Time.” “Brother, I’m gonna do you a favor,” Randy said. “I’m gonna put this song on the soundtrack to Men in Black.”

  Lonnie scoffed at the notion. “Man, please, I’m begging you, do not put my song on some cheap-ass movie soundtrack.”

  Of course, no one could have predicted the kind of phenomenal success Men in Black, which starred Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, would have, except maybe Randy Jackson. “You’re gonna thank me for this later,” he told Lonnie with a laugh.

  “Okay, dude, whatever,” Lonnie said.

  Taura had a similar conversation with Mathew. “He called me and said, ‘You owe me, big-time,’ ” Taura recalled with a laugh. “I asked him why. He said, ‘Because I just got your song on the soundtrack of what is going to be the biggest franchise in the history of the world.’ I was amazed. I was just getting started! We all were!”

  The first Destiny’s Child song would actually be in stellar company on this soundtrack, an album that included songs by the movie’s star, Will Smith, as well as Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, and dancer/rapper and actor Ginuwine. With Beyoncé on lead, this simmering ballad with soaring orchestration showed off not only her great ability but also the group’s harmonic strength. Though still just a youngster, Beyoncé seemed to completely connect with the lyrical storyline of unrequited love.

  Because the film quickly shot to the top at the box office, the soundtrack album was an immediate and unqualified success, spending two weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 200. It would go on to sell triple platinum—three million copies in the United States. (Except for the title song by Will Smith, none of the songs on the album was actually in the movie.) “Man, you can’t tell me there aren’t angels out there watching over us,” D’Wayne Wiggins told Randy Jackson, who always believed the album would be a hit. “True dat,” Randy said, laughing. “True dat.”

  “This soundtrack was the perfect venue for a Destiny’s Child debut song,” says Wiggins. “The fact that I cowrote and also produced ‘Killing Time’ made this premiere even more special for me. It really was the beginning for Destiny’s Child, and I was proud to be on the ground floor of something we knew would be great.”

  Though “Killing Time” was not released as a single, it set the stage perfectly for the first Columbia/Sony single, the aforementioned “No, No, No” by 8Bit and Vince Herbert, which was finally released on November 11, 1997.

  Beyoncé has recalled the first time she heard “No, No, No” on the radio. She and Kelly were in the new Ford Explorer that Tina had just bought. They’d left rehearsal and were picking up Solange at school. “I had just pulled up to the school when our song came on the radio,” Beyoncé recalled. “We turned the volume up as loud as it could go and started running around the car singing along. The bell had just rung and my sister was walking out of class with her friends. When she got closer to the car, she heard the song playing and she dropped her bag and books and started running around the car too. It was really so cool.”

  “No, No, No” reached number three on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. It went to number one on the R&B chart, and was also a hit all over Europe. “This was unbelievable to us,” Beyoncé said. “To find that after all that hard work, it just happens sort of overnight. We thought we’d have to put out a bunch of songs before we had a hit. We never imagined it would be the first one.”

  After hurdling all sorts of personal and professional roadblocks, Destiny’s Child released its debut album on February 17, 1998. It would very quickly soar to number four on the Billboard 200 album pop chart, where it would spend an astounding twenty-six weeks. Eventually it would go on to sell one million copies in the United States alone and three million copies worldwide. It would also earn Destiny’s Child its first high-profile award, the Best R&B/Soul Album of the Year at the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards.

  Fittingly, “My Time Has Come” closes out the album. It could be argued even today that this song—produced and cowritten by veteran jazz/pop entertainer Sylvia Bennett, and lovingly dedicated to Andretta Tillman—is the best, most complete musical arrangement to which Beyoncé has ever laid her voice. On one hand, this big, expansive pop ballad sounds out of place among all of the R&B and hip-hop compositions on the album. However, the song’s powerful sentiment of arriving at a great moment was more than appropriate. Beyoncé sings it with a fortitude and conviction that reflects her gratitude, and that of the other girls, to their “Miss Ann” for all she’d done and for everything she’d sacrificed to get them to this point in their careers.

  On a night before her death that Andretta Tillman and Kenny Moore celebrated the girls’ new recordings over a homemade meal of pork chops and rice, Kenny says Andretta couldn’t stop playing “My Time Has Come.” She had no idea it would be dedicated to her; she simply loved the song and marveled at Beyoncé’s powerful and soulful delivery. “This one song pretty much says it all about what we’ve been through as a family,” she told Kenny with tears in her eyes. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t always fun, either. However, Andretta was sure it had been worth it. “Now, their time has finally come,” she said of her beloved protégées. “Maybe that time has come for all of us,” she concluded. “God willing.”

  Success

  The new year of 1998 was off to a good start for the Knowles family, which came as a great relief considering how bad 1997 had been. According to their 1997 tax filing, the Knowleses’ annual income was about $32,000, down from the year before when they reported around $50,000. Happily, when the family looked toward 1998 with the new record deal in mind, they felt they’d finally get a reprieve from financial stress. Indeed, their income tax return for 1998 would show an almost triple increase from the previous year, with more than $85,000 in income. They still had a lot of cleaning up to do with their finances, though. Their savings account would be seized by the government to pay for back taxes, a “Seizure of Savings Account Notice” filed in March 1998. Certainly, if any two people ever paid their dues, Mathew and Tina Knowles did. For most of t
he 1990s, they dealt with one financial calamity after another during their long odyssey to eventual fame and fortune, and they did so with their dignity intact and without most people in their lives knowing anything about it.

  With these intense financial pressures now easing up, Mathew and Tina also had a chance to sort out at least some of the problems in their marriage. Throughout their separation, the couple was constantly seen together, so much so that most people—other than their closest friends and some business associates—didn’t even know they had parted. In particular, Tina didn’t explain much, choosing instead to keep the secrets of her marriage sacred. Perhaps the closest she got to opening up was when she told one relative, “This separation is bad for our family. It’s bad for the kids. Somehow, I must find a way to put this family back together.”

  Mathew and Tina did reunite and, despite their financial problems, they ended 1997 by purchasing a new family home at 8207 Braes Meadow Drive on December 5 for a little less than $100,000. (For reasons unknown, only Tina’s name is on the deed of sale.) It was actually just as large (with five bedrooms) as the former residence on Parkwood. The ranch-style structure in a good, integrated neighborhood was a lateral move for the family.

  Were Mathew and Tina happier now that they were together again? Most people who knew them at this time say that there seemed to be little change in the cool temperature between them. The girls were much happier, though, and maybe that would have to be enough. Indeed, Beyoncé, Solange, and Kelly were overjoyed to have Mathew back—though as DC’s manager he had never exactly been hard to find—and they seemed to love the new home as much as the former residence. By habit, they usually stayed close to home.