Becoming Beyoncé

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  After she had the baby—whom the Carters and most people in their circle refer to as simply “Blue”—Beyoncé was eager to lose the fifty-seven pounds she’d gained during the pregnancy. It was really just pressure of her own making; she’s used to looking a certain way and couldn’t wait to see that reflection in the mirror again. She also didn’t want to allow herself to become comfortable with the weight she’d gained. She even booked a concert three months after the birth, as if to give herself a deadline. Then she went strict and she went hard, not only with her dieting but with her workout regimen. She did reach her goal, but looking back on it now she feels that her anxiety about it was totally unnecessary. If she has another baby, she’s decided, she will take it easy afterward. “I’ll give myself more time,” she said, “because it was just not necessary to do it that fast.”

  Though Beyoncé and Jay have a team of functionaries who work for them at their homes in New York and Miami, Beyoncé made up her mind early on that she would not allow Blue Ivy to be raised by anyone but her parents. Of course, during the day, when the Carters are out and about doing business, their little girl is often home with her nannies—she has had as many as three at a time.

  Where Blue Ivy is concerned, Beyoncé has vowed to take a similar approach to parenting as Mathew and Tina, no matter what field her daughter sees fit to enter. “Whatever makes her happy, I’m there,” she has said, echoing her own parents’ sentiments when it came to raising her. When Blue has the occasional childish temper tantrum, Beyoncé often lets her rip. She has told relatives that she wants her daughter to cry when she feels the need to do so, and to be free with her emotions.

  One aspect of her life that she hopes to replicate with her daughter is the influence of strong, independent women. She will never forget all of the assertive women who helped guide her in the early days of her career, and those who influenced her to become the woman she is today. She wants the same for Blue Ivy, which is why she makes sure that Tina is an integral part of her life, and other women, too, such as her sister, Solange, her cousin Angie, and her close friend Kelly.

  Going Forward

  As Mathew Knowles held Blue Ivy closely, the infant sucked on a green pacifier and stared up at him with wondrous eyes. He ran his hands through her tangle of thick black hair. With tears in his eyes, he bounced her in his arms. While the touching scene was dutifully recorded for Beyoncé’s documentary, Life Is But a Dream, he sang softly to her. Only he would know what was going through his head in those precious moments. It must have seemed not so long ago, though, that he had held Beyoncé Giselle in his arms in very much the same way.6

  “It would be a lie if I did not say it had been difficult,” he admitted of the breach with Beyoncé. “It was hard for me to let her go—it was hard for both of us to let each other go. And let’s be clear on that. She didn’t let me go, we both let each other go. That’s a big difference.”

  Obviously this had been a challenging time in Mathew’s life. He’d made mistakes, if not in his handling of Beyoncé’s finances then certainly in his handling of his marriage to her mother. However, those who still loved him knew him well, and those who knew him well still loved him. Or, as Taura Stinson put it, “If you know Mathew as I know Mathew, you love him, flaws and all. You just do.”

  No doubt compounding Mathew’s disappointment at this time was that he’d recently also lost Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams as clients—Kelly first, back in January 2009, and then Michelle a year later in January 2010. Both women decided that they wanted different management, though they never publicly disparaged Mathew. Solange also decided to end her working relationship with her father at about this time.

  Kelly, whose career continued unabated, happily married her manager, Tim Weatherspoon, in May 2014, and gave birth to a son in November, Titan Jewell. Sadly, her mother, Doris Rowland Garrison, passed away that year after an extended illness. In the spring of 2015, Kelly signed a deal with the BET network to appear on a competition series called “Chasing Destiny,” dedicated to finding the next major female singing group. Michelle has also continued as a singer, actress, and even reality star with the 2014–15 program Fix My Choir. She remains single and has become an advocate for the understanding of depression in the black community. She, herself, has battled the disease since about the age of fifteen.

  In 2014, Kelly and Beyoncé joined Michelle for a dynamic, reggae-inspired re-working of the Nigerian gospel song, “When Jesus Says Yes,” now titled “Say Yes,” on Michelle’s album Journey to Freedom. It brought a smile to hear the ladies back together again, and to see them performing in the song’s video.

  With the release of any song featuring the Destiny’s Child women comes the always persistent rumor that the group might one day reunite. When they got back together for a brief segment during Beyoncé’s performance on the Super Bowl halftime show in February 2013 in New Orleans, it made national news. All three, clad in sexy leather with knee-high boots, not only looked stunning, but were still in fine voice. After just a few minutes, Kelly and Michelle were excused from the stage, though, leaving it once again to the star of the show. Of course, fans of the two girls wanted a lot more. They were treated to a bit more when, two years later in April of 2015, the three women appeared together at the 30th Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards in Las Vegas, performing a medley of the worship song, “Alpha & Omega” with “Say Yes.”

  Is another more protracted reunion possible? Mathew has said it’s likely. It could be wishful thinking on his part, though. In fact, he still owns the Destiny’s Child brand. If he wanted to, he could hire any three girls and call them Destiny’s Child and, though the public might not be accepting of it, he would be perfectly within his legal rights. So if there’s to be any sort of reunion, Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle would have to work with Mathew once again. Can that occur after everything that has happened? (It should be noted that the ladies were not introduced as Destiny’s Child during either of the televised reunions but, rather, by their individual names.) While it seems like a long shot, if there’s enough money in it, who knows? According to Billboard, the ladies’ last tour together, “Destiny Fulfilled” in 2015, generated over $70 million in the United States, alone. In fact, Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle have discussed the idea of touring together once again but have stopped just short of figuring out how Mathew would work into their equation—or, maybe more aptly put, how they might work into his.

  Only Mathew can speak to whatever feelings he may have over the way things worked out with Destiny’s Child. What is known, though, is that after the break with Beyoncé, he did what he did many years before in a time of crisis, back when the Knowleses were suffering financial difficulties and he reinvented himself as Girls Tyme’s manager. He self-invented again, this time as an educator. He teaches entertainment-related classes at Fisk University and Texas Southern University, and also gives seminars about how to make it in the competitive entertainment business at Houston Community College—the same campus where he took courses when he first started managing Girls Tyme.

  After Blue Ivy came into the world, Mathew and Beyoncé seemed to make a concerted effort to speak to each other more often. Now that she too was a parent, she seemed to have a new understanding of and a deeper sense of empathy for her father. “I asked Mathew if he had seen Beyoncé [in 2014], and he said, ‘Yes, of course,’ ” said Taura Stinson. “Maybe a year and a half ago, one of Tina’s brothers passed, and of course, the whole family was at the funeral. Beyoncé, Mathew, and Tina went off on their own and spent time with the baby. I’ve seen pictures of Mathew holding Blue Ivy on Mathew’s phone. So I know they are all trying . . .”

  Just as she now recognized that Blue Ivy was the best thing that had ever happened to her, Beyoncé knew Mathew had long felt the same way about her. Finding their way back to one another would not be easy, though. “My understanding of it is that Jay Z was the one who talked her into mending fences with her Dad,” said Lydia Locke, mother of Beyonc
é ’s ex-boyfriend, Lyndall. She’s correct, at least according to those in the couple’s inner circle. Jay always felt that Beyoncé was lucky to have a father present in her life and, apparently, believes that the bond she shares with Mathew should never under any circumstances be broken. “Jay has made a lot of mistakes in his own life,” said one of his friends. “So, he understands Mathew. He pushed hard to make sure that any divide between Beyoncé and Mathew never became too great.”

  To say that today Beyoncé and Mathew are extremely close would probably be overstating things. It’s not going to happen overnight. However, they continue to try.

  Mathew Today

  On June 30, 2013, Mathew Knowles—now sixty-one—remarried after an eighteen-month engagement. His new bride was Gena Charmaine Avery, forty-eight. The ceremony took place in Houston. It was widely reported in the press that both Beyoncé and Solange snubbed the ceremony. Actually, Beyoncé was scheduled to appear at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 28, then in Las Vegas on June 29, and back again in Los Angeles on July 1. Meanwhile, Solange was in England on June 30, performing at Glastonbury Festival. Since Beyoncé had the day off—June 30—perhaps she could have made it to Mathew’s wedding, but it would have been cutting it close. Certainly, though, considering the length of Mathew and Gena’s engagement, one would imagine that schedules could have been better coordinated if attending the wedding was a priority. While Mathew made a statement explaining their absence, neither daughter made any announcement congratulating him on his new marriage.

  Likely it wasn’t easy for Beyoncé and Solange to see their father remarry, though without their testimony, one can’t be sure. Most certainly it wasn’t easy for Tina, who had been his wife for thirty-three years. “This is my family,” she said. “My ex-husband is my family. You know, I don’t want to get back into that at all [into a relationship with him], that’s not what I want, but it still hurts. It’s still a blow to your ego.”

  As Mathew navigated his new life with Gena, his former one with Alex still had its repercussions. He had agreed to a very substantial monthly payment to Alex of about $12,000 in child support for his only son, Nixon. Unfortunately, that agreement later became untenable for him, due to, he explained during a court hearing in January 2014, his having lost “my number one client.”

  More than anything, Mathew’s testimony on the stand that day spoke to the diabolical nature of the music industry and how quickly and dramatically a participant in it can experience a reversal of fortunes. Mathew said that when he made the original child support deal, he was earning $3 million a year as Beyoncé’s manager. He testified that his annual income derived solely from being a teacher had plummeted to just $100,000. He also added that after he lost Beyoncé as a client, his Music World Entertainment was foreclosed upon by the IRS.

  For a man who had once dreamed of power, success, and doing something great with his life, Mathew’s crisis seemed like a cruel turn of events. His predicament, at least as outlined by him in these proceedings, also seemed to suggest his innocence in the allegations leveled at him by Live Nation. If he had stolen millions from Beyoncé and was being truthful now, one had to wonder what happened to all the money.

  He did concede that he’d recently received more than $400,000 as a result of an audit into Destiny’s Child’s income at Columbia/Sony, and another $250,000 from the proceeds of selling to Beyoncé his part of a condominium the two jointly owned. In the end, the judge ruled that Mathew’s debt far exceeded any income, thereby justifying a major adjustment to his monthly child support payment, to $2,485 per month.

  Since Nixon’s birth, Alex has founded Motivating Other Mothers, a website dedicated to assisting mothers in handling a wide range of life-changing challenges, such as divorce and job loss. She has also returned to her previous career in branding. Today, she is raising Nixon with her present partner, Harvey Walden, with whom she has been with since the child was a year old.

  Mathew has still not met Nixon. Neither has Beyoncé nor any other member of the Knowles family.

  In July 2014, a year after his marriage to Gena, Mathew’s past would catch up to him again when it was revealed that yet another woman—thirty-year-old TaQoya Branscomb—was demanding a DNA test to prove he was the father of a daughter named Koi who was born to her in 2010. The test came back with a 99.9 percent probability that Mathew was Koi’s father.

  Given that according to Alex and TaQoya, Beyoncé has not met their children or reached out to them, it would seem that her position on Koi is the same as it is with Nixon. These children are not her responsibility. Both have to do with Mathew’s personal life choices, not her own.

  Today, Mathew seems happy and content with Gena. “Recent years have not been easy for him,” says someone who knows him well. “He’s a man who has worked hard all of his life. It seems grossly unfair that he can’t now just relax in his senior years. But, that said, he does somehow seem more at peace.” One can’t help but wonder if Mathew Knowles, always a restless soul, can ever be truly settled, or if that’s even the kind of life he wants for himself. “All I can say is that there will always be another proposition for Mat,” concluded his friend. “In other words, the man’s not done yet. Knowing him, I can guarantee it.”

  A New Life for Tina

  Tina Knowles admitted that she still “hadn’t had closure” where Mathew was concerned in the spring of 2013 when she learned that he was to remarry. It speaks to the depth of her love for him and his place in her family that despite so many revelations of late, she still felt bonded to him. Coincidentally, at the same time, Tina was the wedding planner for a very good friend of hers. This uneasy confluence of marital events was hard on her. She was unhappy, feeling insecure and desperately worried about her own future. True to her nature, though, it didn’t take long for her to rebound.

  “I let myself feel sorry for myself for a minute, but then my fight came back,” she recalled in October 2014. “I thought, ‘I’m so blessed. I have so many opportunities.’ So I made a plan. I said, ‘What do you want, Tina?’ Well, I want some time off. So I took the time off. I started reading art books; I love art. I started traveling. I would travel with my daughter, but not to work. I had forgotten how to live. I realize now that it was low self-esteem, that it was being fifty-eight and having to start all over again. The other part was just that I had lost myself. I told my kids, ‘You know what? You can call me and I’ll come if it’s something really important, but otherwise I’m taking care of Tina. This is my selfish moment.’ Before I knew it, I started liking me again.”

  After Mathew’s wedding, it was Jay Z’s suggestion to her that Tina begin dating younger men. He just wanted her to have more fun in her life. However, Tina began seeing the handsome—and seven years her senior – actor Richard Lawson, who was also an acting teacher and motivational speaker. (He’s probably best known for his role in 1982’s Poltergeist.) Two years later, on April 12, 2015, the couple married on a 140-foot yacht in Newport Beach, California. Of course, Beyoncé and Jay attended the ceremony, as did Solange and her husband, Alan Ferguson. Tina’s grandchildren, Blue Ivy and Julez, acted as flower girl and ring bearer. Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams were also present. “It couldn’t have been more perfect,” Tina—who wore a diaphanous, white gown designed by Romona Keveza—said of her wedding day. She now identifies as “Tina Knowles Lawson.” She continued, “To walk down the aisle and see all my friends and family and to see my handsome man standing there, and to know that at 61 you can still find love and have a magical day like that . . . it was really beautiful.

  “It’s just been a great journey,” Tina concluded of her life. “Most of the times in my life when things have been the toughest and the worst and I thought I would die and not get through them, they turned out to be the best times. My daughter wrote a song called ‘Survivor,’ and it’s my favorite song because it says, when times get bad, I’m gonna work harder, and I’m gonna keep pushing and I’m gonna be positive and make it h
appen because I’m a survivor. That’s been the story of my life.”

  Beyoncé: The Secret Album

  For a woman who spends most of her life under heavy public scrutiny, Beyoncé’s solitary moments in the recording studio are much needed and appreciated. It’s where she finds her greatest sense of serenity. Far away from the pressing crowds of her life, the small, confined space of a recording booth in front of a single microphone is where she’s truly free to be herself, to concentrate fully on what she most loves to do, be exasperated by its many maddening flaws, and finally exhilarated by its carefully crafted perfection. All of it is a process privately conducted at a remove from prying and critical eyes. As an artist, she has always reveled in the creation of her music and has even admitted that she often finds the process more liberating and satisfying than the actual delivery of the product to the world for its final judgment. Obviously such solitary moments in the studio are also primarily responsible for her phenomenal success. After all, where would Beyoncé Knowles Carter be without her songs?

  Beyoncé spends untold hours in the studio recording music she’d been working on for days, months, and even years, tinkering with the lyrics, the melody, the orchestration, trying to shape it in an effort to see if it’s even worth sharing with her public. Her friend and coproducer The-Dream said it best when he summarized, “There’s multiple albums being made. Most of the time, we’re just being creative, period. We’re talking about Bey, somebody who sings all day long and somebody who writes all day long. There’s probably a hundred records just sitting around.” Indeed, it’s safe to say that many thousands of dollars are spent every year producing songs that will never find their way into the marketplace, tunes that didn’t rise to the high standards Beyoncé has set for herself over the years. For the Carters, going into the studio together is one of their favorite pastimes. Over the years, Jay has produced many dozens of songs for Beyoncé that the public has never heard. Not only is their time together in the studio a creative outlet for them, but it’s also a way for them to wind down and relax.7