Beyoncé Marries Jay
Though Tina Knowles had made some tough choices in her life, she was never one to complain about them. Yet she must have wanted more for both her daughters and for Kelly than to settle for a marriage that wasn’t completely satisfying. Most mothers would want more for their children. She had no reservations about Jay Z as a potential son-in-law, though, that much was clear. Neither did Mathew. In fact, Mathew very much enjoyed his friendship with Jay and often boasted to friends about the expensive gifts, be it a watch or some other piece of fine jewelry, that Jay had given him. Jay is even said to have gifted Mathew with a pair of tennis shoes that cost $15,000. Mathew was proud of Jay’s success, and happy that his daughter had found someone worthy of her love.
On April 4, 2008—about a week after Beyoncé finished work on Cadillac Records—ever so privately, true not only to her nature but to his, Beyoncé, now twenty-six, and Shawn Carter, thirty-eight, were married in New York City. The nuptials took place at Jay’s high-ceilinged and light-filled 8,309-square-foot seventh-floor penthouse in Tribeca. (He’d purchased it back in September 2004 for almost $7 million. Beyoncé owns a couple of eye-popping condominiums in the city as well, including reportedly one at Richard Meier’s glass-architecture On Prospect Park, but it was decided to hold the ceremony at Jay’s.)
It was a small, lovely ceremony, with just forty guests, against an affluent Manhattan backdrop. Tina, along with Jay’s grandmother, eighty-three-year-old Hattie, chose to prepare the meal themselves rather than have the event catered—there were Creole specialties like gumbo from Tina and soul foods such as oxtails and candied yams from Hattie. Among the guests, of course, were Mathew, Tina, and Solange; Jay’s mother, Gloria; his grandmother, Hattie; Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams; and the couple’s friends Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin (who collaborated with Jay on his 2006 album Kingdom Come). No cell phones were allowed; the guests were asked to leave them with the drivers hired to transport them to the wedding.
A large tent was set up on the building’s roof and decorated in a royal theme. Certainly the flowers picked out by Jay were also of special note.
Four days earlier, on Monday, Amy Vongpitaka—owner of Amy’s Orchids in Non Nok Khai, a tiny town outside Sampran, Thailand—received a call at her Virginia warehouse from a top floral designer in Manhattan. She was told that there was a need for as many as one hundred thousand pure white dendrobium orchids for an important wedding. They had to be the whitest of the white, and there should be no stems, just blooms. Amy says she spent two hours on the phone with the designer and received via e-mail illustrations for exactly how the blooms should look—which, as described to her, were to be “fit for a palace.” The designer also told her that it was Jay Z, not Beyoncé, who had met with her for more than an hour discussing these floral arrangements. Jay said that he wanted everything to be perfect for Beyoncé. Or as he put it to the designer, “I want the whole thing to be dope.” He knew exactly how he wanted the blooms to look, and how they should be arranged.
Amy is used to producing orchids for big names from all over the world. Her clients have ranged from Snoop Dogg for his wedding to special orders for the queen of Thailand. Therefore this order was not unusual. However, because the turnaround time was especially tight, she was forced to employ extra people at her orchid farm in Thailand, fifty total, to pluck the delicate flowers. They were packed three boxes deep to protect their fragility. She won’t say how much she charged for her services, but says she had to double her fee for each bloom because of the rush delivery. Online reports are that she charges $40 a bloom. If doubled for one hundred thousand orchids, this would total $8 million . . . for flowers! Amy Vongpitaka recalled, “Jay Z said, ‘I want special. I want this, I want that. Expensive is no problem.’ ”
From the hundred thousand blooms, the wedding’s floral designer finally chose between sixty thousand and seventy thousand of them, many of which hung as elegant eight-foot garlands from the ceiling.
Contrary to their often provocative public personas, Beyoncé and Jay chose a traditional marriage ceremony. Beyoncé wore a sleeveless floor-length white silk gown and long tulle veil and ruffled train. Her hair was pulled elegantly into a chignon. Jay sported a finely tailored black tux with black tie and white rose boutonniere. They were married by the Knowles’s longtime family priest, Pastor Rudy Rasmus. All of the female guests were asked to wear white, and the men black suits, except for Mathew, who wore a silver jacket and black tie. Rather than throw rice at the newlyweds, the guests tossed what appear to have been white feathers.
Because of the secrecy surrounding the event, it is not known for certain whether or not Mathew walked Beyoncé down the aisle. According to Alex Wright, whose relationship with Mathew was unfolding during this time, he did not. However, she didn’t attend the wedding. She says that after Mathew returned to Los Angeles from the Manhattan ceremony, he told her that he didn’t partake in that honor. That specific detail, though, is but one of the many that remain a mystery from this closely guarded affair.
Beyoncé’s wedding band is a $5 million, eighteen-carat Lorraine Schwartz diamond ring. (She always takes it off before interviews because, truly, it’s impossible for it to not become the topic of conversation, it’s that dazzling.) “I can’t think about how much it costs,” she said privately. Still, after all of this time of affluent living, she marvels at her good fortune. “For any girl to wear something that costs this much . . . well . . . I can’t even think about it or I’ll get scared and put it in a box somewhere for safekeeping.”
Since it would be at least six months before the couple would even confirm that they’d been married, some might say they were pathological about their privacy. However, they didn’t care what others thought about the secrecy. When a couple months after the ceremony Jay obliquely referred to Beyoncé as a “friend” to a reporter for Vibe, the writer called him out on it. “You said your ‘friend,’ but this is your wife. Are you still not willing to confirm?” pressed the writer. “That’s ridiculous for me to confirm,” Jay said testily. “I don’t have . . . I’m gonna say, I think that was a ridiculous question. I just think it’s really a part of your life that you gotta keep to yourself. You have to, or you’ll go insane in this type of business. You have to have something that’s sacred to you and the people around you.”
Obama
Beyoncé started the year 2009 off on a somewhat historical note by singing at the inaugural ball of President Barack Obama on January 20. She had only one day at home, at her and Jay’s gated seven-bedroom, eight-bath Mediterranean estate in Miami (with its own boat dock on a barrier island described by Forbes as a “billionaire island fortress”) before she had to prepare for her performance. For the president’s first dance with First Lady Michelle Obama, Beyoncé sang Etta James’s “At Last.” It was a stunning performance.
Two days earlier, Beyoncé had closed the “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial” with a beautiful rendition of “America the Beautiful.” Of course, she and Jay had several opportunities to speak to the president and First Lady. Obama was so taken with the couple, he pulled from his vest a small card with his private cell phone number on it and handed it to Beyoncé. “Call me anytime,” he told her. “I mean, anytime he will let you,” he added, motioning to Jay and smiling. Beyoncé was so amazed, she immediately put the number on speed dial on her phone, though, to anyone’s knowledge, anyway, she’s never used it. In 2013, Jay mentioned on a radio show that he sometimes “had texts from Obama, of course,” repeating a sentiment he’d made on his recording of “On to the Next One,” where he rapped that he has Obama “on text.” But two years later, in 2015, Obama appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and said that he actually doesn’t text—he only uses e-mail.
Certainly, to say that the Obamas and the Carters are friends would be exaggerating their relationship. They are friendly, but it’s not as if they call each other every day. They live i
n different worlds. When or if the Obamas ever need them for something, a concert or fund-raiser or whatever, of course the Carters will be available to them. As Jay put it to one colleague, “We’d do it big for the Obamas, anytime.”
In 2010, the Carters would tour the White House and take photos with the Obamas in the Situation Room. The Carters would later support Obama’s reelection campaign, holding a $40,000-per-ticket fund-raiser for him. Three years later, in January 2013, it would be Beyoncé’s great honor to perform the national anthem at the second inauguration of Obama as the fourty-fourth president of the United States. A controversy would erupt after the appearance when a Marine Band representative blabbed to reporters that Beyoncé had used a prerecorded vocal track. In fact, such a track is often used at big events such as the inauguration in order to avoid sound problems. However, these days the public and media are prickly about lip-syncing because it suggests that the vocalist can’t really sing. Of course, in some cases that’s true. But is there really any doubt that Beyoncé is a singer? Actually, on that important day, she was singing along with a prerecorded vocal and instrumental track. She would later explain that she didn’t have time to rehearse with the orchestra and was therefore concerned about meeting her standards of perfection.
Beyoncé would decide to stay silent on the subject for a while before finally addressing it at a press conference to promote her upcoming Super Bowl halftime performance. Before taking questions, she asked the reporters to please stand. She then sang the national anthem in full voice, loud and a cappella against a backdrop of a huge American flag. Of course, by the time she finished, the press corps were cheering. “Thank you guys so much,” she said graciously. Then, with a sly smile, she asked, “Any questions?”
Trouble Brewing
By October 2008, Mathew’s romance with AlexSandra Wright had been going on for about a year. They were content, living their lives, doing their work. He had his business affairs relating to Beyoncé, Solange, and his Music World company, and she had hers in integrated branding.
Toward the end of the month, Mathew went to New York to meet with Solange. It didn’t go well. Apparently, during a rehearsal for a showcase of her Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams album, father and daughter ended up in a very heated argument. They were both nothing if not strong-willed. “Solange is actually much more like her father than Beyoncé,” observed one of Solange’s friends. “Solange is candid, sometimes blunt. It may take some time, but eventually you will know where you stand with her, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve worked with her,” says Choke No Joke of Solange. “I’ve produced shows for her. I’ve hung out with her. I’ve even tried to date her. She doesn’t kiss ass, she doesn’t toe the line. She has strong opinions and she lets record executives know about them whether they want to hear them or not.”
In fact, at this same time, Solange released a telling song called “Fuck the Industry (Signed Sincerely),” which she wrote herself and which gave voice to her frustration over being compared to others in the record industry—including you-know-who. The first line is, “I’ll never be picture-perfect Beyoncé.” She also released a song on the Hadley St. Dreams album called “God Given Name,” in which she sings, “I’m not her and never will be / Two girls going in different directions.” She told one reporter, “I’m never going to be about sales and buzz, and I just wish people would get that about me, once and for all. I love my sister, but I am not my sister.”
Perhaps making things even more complex for Solange is that she may be an unacknowledged writer on many of the songs recorded by Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child. For instance, Mathew told Houston newscaster Khambrel Marshall that Solange “wrote the number one songs on Beyoncé’s first album.” On that album, the number one songs were “Crazy in Love” and “Baby Boy.” “Naughty Girl” and “Me, Myself and I” were also major Top Five hits. Solange is not credited on any of them.
Mathew has also said that Solange “wrote 50 percent” of Kelly’s debut album, Simply Deep. In fact, she is credited with cowriting only two of the thirteen songs, “Simply Deep,” a duet with Kelly, and “Beyond Imagination.” Is Mathew overstating her contribution, or is it possible that she’s not credited for at least five other songs? Keep in mind that the notion of songwriting credits is very nebulous in the record business. In fact, Beyoncé has often been accused of receiving credit for songs that she did not write; some of her critics in this regard say it would be more accurate to say she “tweaked” ideas that were the brainchild of other writers. (Many writers and producers who have worked with Beyoncé have vehemently disagreed with that assessment.) Given this terrain, one can’t help but wonder how Solange might feel if in fact she is unaccredited as a songwriter on records that were major hits for Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé. People often extend themselves for family, but as a woman who had long been trying to get people to accept her as an artist, one would think that if this is true of Solange, she might have her share of mixed emotions about it. One also has to wonder whether she is receiving royalties for these songs. Since she hasn’t addressed the issue publicly, it’s anybody’s guess.
Only Mathew and Solange know the specifics of the disagreement they had in New York. Afterward, though, Alex says, “Mathew returned to Los Angeles and told me, ‘I’m not going back to New York or Houston.’ And he didn’t.”
Shortly after that incident, Tina and Beyoncé launched their latest House of Deréon collection, which was inspired by the wardrobe from Cadillac Records, at Bloomingdale’s in New York. Then Beyoncé and Solange took off for Tokyo, where they were set to promote their new Samantha Thavasa handbag line. As always, the Knowles women appeared lovely and composed at their product launches, all three by now adept at concealing private sorrows when it came time to work.
Meanwhile, Mathew made the decision to move permanently to Los Angeles. First he and Alex settled into a suite in the Beverly Hilton. Then they leased a home in upscale Beverly Hills, with an option to buy. Alex says that Mathew told her that Tina, Beyoncé, and Solange were well aware of his new domestic situation. She had no reason not to believe him.
Whatever the feelings of the Knowles women regarding Mathew’s move to the West Coast, everything seemed to be going well for him and Alex. She says she even began handling some of the integrated branding projects at his Music World. When he traveled she would pull as much as $3,300 a day from what she says was a joint bank account to handle their bills and other expenses.
“We could lock ourselves away from the world and just exist together,” Alex recalled of her life with Mathew. “He was loving and attentive,” she recalled. “When you’re with him, you feel like you’re the only person in his world. But it’s because, whoever you are, you’re his life raft in that moment, and as a result, you are the only person in his world. Still, he made me feel needed and I loved it,” she recalled. “I could see that he was troubled by certain things, and I wanted to save him. It speaks to everything good and everything bad about me, as well as whatever it says about him.”
Mathew may have been starting a new life with Alex, but he still had the old one, and it wasn’t going to just go away. It was Beyoncé’s idea to get the entire family together around the time of the 2008 Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone was flying into Houston for it, people from Tina’s side of the family and from Mathew’s. Also attending would be Jay’s mother, Gloria Carter, and other relatives. However, Alex says that Mathew couldn’t face it because he feared it might be nothing more than an excuse for everyone to pile on and challenge him.
“I remember it well,” Alex said of the holiday. “Mathew was supposed to take a flight out to Houston the day before Thanksgiving. There were a lot of texts and e-mails flying back and forth between him and family members. He kept putting it off until the last minute. He kept changing his reservations, pushing the flight back . . . and then he just didn’t go.”
It’s not known how Beyoncé felt about her father’s absence at the reunion. What
is known is that the event had taken a great deal of strategic planning because, as always, she was incredibly busy. Not only was she scheduled to perform on the Today show in New York in November, but she was committed to promoting Cadillac Records in Los Angeles with dozens of television and press interviews. She then had to attend the movie’s premiere there with Tina. She’d also agreed to go to London to promote her single “If I Were a Boy” and album, I Am . . . Sasha Fierce. Then she was off to Monte Carlo to perform at the World Music Awards. Trying to pull together a family reunion in the midst of such orchestrated chaos could not have been easy; Mathew’s not showing up for it had to have been upsetting. “I know they were angry,” Alex said of the family. “Mathew told me that they were all upset.”
After Thanksgiving, life continued for Mathew and Alex without much change. However, even when immersed in his private relationship with Alex, Mathew was still very much involved with the career of his famous firstborn.
In December 2008, Simon Cowell wanted Beyoncé to go to England to perform a duet with one of the two talented finalists of the television show The X Factor, Alexandra Burke. A few years earlier, though, Cowell had been quoted as making some rather unflattering comments about Beyoncé in Esquire. “I find the whole Beyoncé thing really mystifying,” he said. “She’s not sexy, she hasn’t got a great body and she’s not a great singer.”
Though Beyoncé was obviously used to criticism, Cowell’s commentary still hit her hard. It would have been one matter to criticize just one element of her persona, but all of it? It seemed wholly unfair. So when word got back to her and Mathew that Cowell wanted her to fly to the UK and appear on the show, their response was pure silence. It became clear that the only way she would consider the invitation would be if Cowell apologized—which is exactly what he did. Alex was in the room when Simon telephoned Mathew to say that he was very sorry.
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