Becoming Beyoncé

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  What was Beyoncé’s response to her mother’s clarion call? “At that point,” Tina would recall, “not much of anything. She didn’t even have a reaction, she was so down.”

  More than anything, Tina hoped that Beyoncé would rally and get back to business. Since that didn’t seem to be happening, she felt the time had come for her to take action. “As a mother, I had a responsibility to my child as well as to Kelly,” she would later recall, “to try to help them through this period and to advise them to not just lay down and let somebody else be in control of their destinies. The video was coming up. Beyoncé and Kelly were saying, ‘How are we gonna do a video with only two girls?’ They were stressing out over it. So I made a decision. I followed my own advice, you could say.”

  Tina remembered a girl she’d heard about in Los Angeles named Tenitra Williams who had sung background for R&B singer Monica. Destiny’s Child’s choreographer, Junella Segura (who’d also worked for Monica), had mentioned to Tina that Tenitra was interested in either pursuing a solo career or maybe joining a group. When she asked Kelly about her, Kelly said she believed she and Beyoncé had met Tenitra somewhere along the way, but she wasn’t sure—maybe in a hotel lobby in Atlanta. (Actually, the girls met her in July 1999 during the taping of a television special for Nickelodeon in Sacramento, California.)

  For some inexplicable reason, Tina had an intuition about Tenitra; she knew she had to get in touch with her. So she made a few phone calls, and the next thing she knew, she was on the line with Tenitra, who lived in Rockford, Illinois. Tina told her they had an opening in Destiny’s Child for what she called “an alternate,” and asked if she would consider flying down to Houston for a meeting that very evening. “I made the arrangements for her trip personally,” Tina later recalled. “And I also paid for her transportation out of my own pocket.” She decided not to tell Mathew about it, however. She later testified, “I think he was still hoping things would work out with LaTavia and LeToya, and I didn’t want to mess with that. If it could be worked out, fine. But I wasn’t going to just sit around and wait to see what would happen next. That’s not me. That’s not how I do things. I wanted to do something. So I did. I found a new girl.”

  Later that afternoon, Beyoncé finally emerged from her bedroom. She looked rested, more relaxed. “So, what are we gonna do?” she asked, seeming a little more ready to take care of business.

  “I already did it,” Tina told her. “She’ll be here tonight.”

  “Who?” Beyoncé said.

  “Tenitra. The new girl.”

  A couple hours later, Tina and Solange picked up Tenitra at the airport and brought her back to the house. There they had a meeting—or, to be legally precise, as Tina later put it, “I had a meeting with nobody because I did not have the authority to have a meeting. I was just a mother trying to help out. Beyoncé and Kelly, they had a meeting with Tenitra. I just sat and watched. They talked and then heard her sing, and then they sang together. It worked! I could see the chemistry right away.”

  Tenitra Michelle Williams, nineteen, was born on July 23, 1980, in Rockford, one of four children. She was raised middle-class; her father worked as a car salesman, her mother as a nurse. She’d been singing since the age of seven and had been working behind Monica since around October 1999. She had a surprisingly strong voice, a clear tone that deserved to be spotlighted. It was no wonder she had been thinking of a solo career, but certainly joining a group as successful as Destiny’s Child would be a major step toward broader recognition. At that first meeting, she made a big impression on everyone with her immediate willingness to be a team player. “What exactly is the problem?” she asked. “And what can I do to help?” After spending the night with the Knowleses, Tenitra flew back to Illinois to wait to hear. “I like her,” Beyoncé told Kelly, “I really do.” Kelly agreed, remarking, “She gives off a light, doesn’t she?”

  Meanwhile, Kelly recalled a girl she had met on the set of Destiny’s Child’s video shoot for “Bills, Bills, Bills.” She was an eighteen-year-old extra named Farrah Franklin. Born on May 3, 1981, in Seattle, she was currently living in Los Angeles and a member of a singing group called Jane Doe, which was about to be disbanded. Tina flew Farrah to Los Angeles to meet with Beyoncé and Kelly. As had been the case with Michelle, they too hit it off. Farrah was an excellent dancer and a reasonably good vocalist. They actually weren’t looking for great singers, though—they were looking for two girls who would fit the group’s image for the “Say My Name” video. Whoever was selected would just be lip-syncing the song to LaTavia’s and LeToya’s voices.

  Perhaps LaTavia and LeToya didn’t fully grasp as much when they chose to disaffirm their contracts, but Mathew Knowles actually owned Destiny’s Child. When LeToya earlier wondered, “When did our group become his group?” the answer was: when he trademarked the name. Legally, he could put anyone in the act he wanted, replacing all the girls if that was his desire. Unfortunately, it seems that what LaTavia and LeToya may have lacked at this time was strong adult guidance. They were only eighteen. Though they were properly represented by lawyers and advisers, how could they be expected to fully grasp the gravity of the life-changing decisions they’d made? Some of the adults in their midst (including Pamela Lackett) tried to help, though. For instance, when they asked their original producer, Lonnie Jackson, for advice, he suggested they embark on a radio tour to fully air their grievances and garner the public’s support. However, the girls didn’t feel they had a voice. To them, it felt as if no one cared and, in a sense, maybe they were right. There being little room for sentimentality in show business, Mathew, Tina, Beyoncé, and Destiny’s Child were more than ready to continue onward . . . without them.

  Moving Forward with New Girls

  It was Friday, February 11, 2000, Kelly Rowland’s nineteenth birthday. Mathew was sitting behind his desk at Music World headquarters in Houston, with Beyoncé and Kelly seated on the other side of it. He picked up the telephone and dialed Don Ienner, the president of Columbia/Sony. He then put him on speakerphone. “Donny, I have the ladies here,” Mathew said. “We want to come to some kind of understanding as to how to proceed.”

  “Great. Hello, ladies,” Don said.

  “Hi, Donny!”

  From this point on, according to her later testimony, Beyoncé did most of the talking. She was aware, she said, that she had previously informed the label of her plans to go solo, but now she wasn’t so sure about it. “We’ve got two stand-ins for the [‘Say My Name’] video next week,” she said, “and if it goes well we’re thinking maybe we might just add them to the group permanently.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of a surprise,” said Ienner.

  “If not these two girls, maybe two others,” Kelly chimed in.

  “So, what do y’all think of that?” Mathew asked the record company executive.

  “This is your call, Beyoncé,” Don Ienner said. “And you too, Kelly.” He added that if the girls wanted to continue as Destiny’s Child, the label would support them. If they wanted to go solo, the company would sanction that decision as well. It was certainly gratifying for the girls to hear such unequivocal approval from the president of their label.

  “Okay, now I’m fixin’ to get excited,” Beyoncé said after the call ended. She and Kelly leapt from their chairs and hugged each other while jumping up and down in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, Mathew sat behind his desk, grinning. It was good to see his daughter acting like her old self.

  Now that the group had been rounded out, at least for the purpose of the video shoot, Beyoncé felt much better about things. “We taught the girls the routine [for the ‘Say My Name’ video] in one day,” she recalled. “They had never danced in stilettos . . . it was crazy.” After a few rehearsals, the choreography to the song looked so bad there was no way to use it on the video. “It looked terrible,” Beyoncé recalled. “So we had an idea to just start posing on the beat. The director just started saying, bam, bam, bam—and on every ba
m we would strike a pose. And that became the whole video.”

  In spite of its minimal choreography, the video for “Say My Name” is stylishly shot, with a pop art feel. Each scene is filmed in a vivid color scheme and the girls’ costumes match the surrounding furnishings perfectly, blending in seamlessly with their background. Makeup and hair are once again flawlessly done. Tenitra and Farrah definitely look like pop stars in orange costumes matching their surroundings. However, they are given little more to do than strike poses as Beyoncé sings. Oddly, Kelly appears in less than half of the video, leaving some to wonder about the reason for her exclusion.

  The video shoot for “Say My Name,” which was done in Los Angeles, had gone so well, it was quickly decided that, yes, Tenitra and Farrah would join Destiny’s Child. They signed on the dotted line on February 18, 2000.

  From the start, there were a few image concerns. For instance, Mathew sat down with Tenitra and told her that he felt it would be a good idea for her to start using her middle name, Michelle, as her stage name. He said the suits at Columbia/Sony viewed Tenitra as being “too ethnic” a name. If anything, this decision spoke to the label’s determination to make sure Destiny’s Child appealed to a white as well as a black audience—as if Caucasians would have been put off by the name Tenitra. Looking back on it all these years later, it’s a little difficult to believe that the name business was even an issue, but apparently it was. Tenitra was fine with the alteration, though, saying she was very honored just to be in a group as successful as Destiny’s Child. So from this moment on, Tenitra Williams would be known as Michelle Williams.

  “You’re kinda light, aren’t you?” Tina told Farrah during a group meeting in which styling was the subject. Farrah agreed that, yes, she was light-skinned. “Would you mind spending some time in a tanning salon?” Tina asked. “Because you’re replacing LaTavia, and she’s more dark-skinned.” Though Farrah was taken aback, she reluctantly agreed. “And also I think we need to dye your hair red, because LaTavia had a more reddish tone,” Tina said. “Probably in six months you can wear your own color.”

  Of course, no one was trying to fool the public into believing that Farrah was LaTavia, but in terms of the group’s branding it made sense to Tina to at least try not to make the transition be so jarring. Later, Farrah would complain to the media about having to make these changes, causing Beyoncé to have to defend it. “We needed one girl with red hair and one girl with black hair,” she admitted, “because that’s how the two girls who left looked. And that was also my mama’s original vision for the group. She dyed each of our hair a different color. We figured this way every fan could relate to at least one of us, and each of us would have her own distinctive look. At the time, Farrah was fine with it. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘no big deal.’ ” Michelle later chimed in that Farrah’s having made a big deal of those imaging issues was “very unnecessary bullcrap that’s absolutely ridiculous.”

  “So, what do you think of the new girls?” Mathew asked vocal coach Kim Wood Sandusky after she finished working with Farrah and Michelle for the first time. It was an interesting turn of events that she was coaching the new girls since, by her own admission, she had never worked with LaTavia and LeToya. “Well, both are pretty good,” Kim said, choosing her words carefully. “But Farrah . . . I just don’t know about her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She has a very pretty talent, don’t get me wrong,” Kim said, according to her memory. “But I’m not sure she has the . . . personality.” She clarified that—at least on a first impression—she wasn’t certain Farrah had the temperament to handle the kind of pressure that goes along with great fame. As far as her vocals were concerned, she said she—like all of them—could benefit from work on power, stamina, and breathing.

  “And Michelle?”

  “Oh, she’s amazing,” Kim said eagerly. She noted that not only did Michelle’s voice have great character, but she also had a strong personality. “She’s the real deal, that one,” Kim said. “May I be candid with you?” she then asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I think Michelle has the right chemistry to work with Beyoncé and Kelly. That’s the perfect group right there: Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle. That’s my gut.” She said that not only did those three have a pleasing blend, but she felt that Michelle had the right frame of mind to be in a trio that was to be fronted by another girl. She allowed that she was more than happy to try to work Farrah into things, but that she had “a very strong feeling that we don’t really need her.”

  “Well, that’s interesting, because I was thinking along those same lines,” Mathew said. He also noted that if there was one thing he’d learned from working with girls all these years it was that “these things have a way of working themselves out.” For the time being, he suggested that Kim work with all four girls, “and let’s see where that takes us.”

  Though Mathew may have had some reservations about Farrah, he was happy with her and Michelle’s work on the video. His greater satisfaction, though, was in seeing Beyoncé not allow LaTavia and LeToya to lay ruin to her world. Now that he had time to process their actions, he was astonished by their naïveté. In the fickle record industry, it took no time at all to go from the top of the charts right down to the bottom simply because of one bad decision. He’d seen it happen repeatedly, simply as an observer of the business. “I remember him saying, ‘Whatever it takes, I am going to protect what my daughter and I built together,’ ” said Chad Elliott, who had cowritten “Jumpin’ Jumpin’ ” and was now vice president of A&R at Sony. “LaTavia and LeToya had also hurt his daughter, and to him that was personal. He now felt that Destiny’s Child had to rebound quickly, that the sooner the former members were relegated to the past, the better off everyone would be.”

  If in fact Mathew felt LaTavia and LeToya had hurt his kid, hurt in return was what both girls would feel when they started hearing through the grapevine that Destiny’s Child had filmed a video without them. They didn’t believe—or didn’t want to believe—it was true. They happened to be watching BET (Black Entertainment Television) a couple weeks later and heard the announcement that the new video for “Say My Name” was about to be broadcast. The two then watched in astonishment as the colorful and well-produced video aired for the first time, featuring two other singers alongside Beyoncé and Kelly. It was a crushing moment. LaTavia Roberson recalled, “We couldn’t believe our eyes. There’s not much more I can say about it. We simply just could not believe our eyes.”

  Given the circumstances, it was probably inevitable that LaTavia and LeToya would file a lawsuit against Mathew, Beyoncé, and Kelly. The suit, which was filed on March 21, 2000, accused Mathew of “greed, insistence of control, self-dealing and promotion of his daughter’s interest at the expense of the plaintiffs.” The suit also alleged that “in [Mathew’s] mind, he was effectively the owner of Destiny’s Child and complete master of the group.” One colleague of Mathew’s says he had a good chuckle at that particular stating of the obvious.

  Roberson and Luckett also claimed that Mathew encouraged Beyoncé and Kelly to go on “a rampage to destroy” their careers. Moreover, they claimed, he had made untold dollars off their efforts as singers in the group, whereas they “made virtually none.” Furthermore, the girls’ attorney, Warren Fitzgerald, put forth the notion that his clients didn’t quit Destiny’s Child. If anything, it was Beyoncé who quit, which of course was true, even though she quickly reinstated herself.

  After the suit was filed, LaTavia and LeToya told MTV that they had “nothing but love” for Beyoncé and Kelly and that their “issue was with management.” When Kurt Loder of MTV passed their comments on to Beyoncé and Kelly during a taped interview, the two were incredulous. Kelly, never one to hold back, responded by saying, “Well, they slapped a nice lawsuit on us.” With a sweet smile, Beyoncé added, “That’s a lot of love,” to which Kelly concluded, “That’s some hard love, isn’t it?”

  Lyndall L
acks Purpose

  The litigation from disgruntled former Destiny Child members didn’t put much of a damper on the group’s upward trajectory, or on that of the Knowles family either. On June 28, 2000, with the phenomenal success of the group—who’d just appeared at the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) Fashion Awards two days earlier—the Knowleses were able to move into a new baronial-looking home on Missouri City’s Lake Olympia, just outside Houston, a gated property at 27 Swan Isle Boulevard. They paid anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000 (property records seem to have conflicting amounts) for the six-bedroom, nearly five-thousand-square-foot home. “It was definitely a step up,” Lyndall Locke recalled. “Big rooms. Overlooked a lake. First time I walked into that place I was, like, ‘Okay so this is how they gonna roll now?’ ”

  While the new home was large, it was by no means a mansion. Still, there was an enormous entry and a living room filled with regal, oversized furniture. Mirrors on many of the walls made all of the rooms look even bigger than they actually were. The house was decorated by Tina in her larger-than-life, colorful style. Her huge kitchen was all white and always meticulously clean (with the assistance of a maid). The master bedroom suite was on the first floor, with a small closet holding Mathew’s clothing, whereas Tina’s were hung with care in a walk-in closet the size of a large bedroom. Upstairs were bedrooms for Beyoncé and Kelly, as well as for cousin Angie, who would stay with the Knowleses from time to time. Kelly’s room was furnished in royal deep burgundy colors. Beyoncé’s featured a genie-in-the-bottle theme, with colorful pillows of fuchsia, purple, and gold made (mostly by Tina) from the fabric of silk saris. Outside, the former garage was converted into a bedroom for Solange. In an upstairs den furnished in bright red were hung many of Destiny’s Child’s certificates and awards. Racks after rack of Destiny’s Child costumes designed by Tina were carefully stored in a newly built garage.