It's a Family Affair
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Afterward Beyoncé said that she got so depressed about losing her two friends, with whom she’d sung since she was a little girl, that she went to bed and stayed there for days. She’d never had anything bad happen to her before, she told friends. She developed terrible acne as she tried to figure out what to do: Could she and Kelly continue? Should they? “It was hard,” remembered family friend Vernell Jackson. “It was hurtful. But Beyoncé was, like, ‘This is my dream. Either I stop or move on.’ She chose to move on. The thing that kept her going was her faith in God. The thing I’d tell her is, ‘God gave you your talent. People can’t take it away from you. So you have to keep going.’” Beyoncé had inherited her parents’ will, their refusal to give up or let anything get in their way.
In 2001 Beyoncé emerged as the unquestioned leader of the new Destiny’s Child with the release of Survivor, which debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart. The album, on which Beyoncé produced or wrote almost every song, could have been called “More Songs About Building Self-esteem,” with songs like “Independent Women, Part 1,” “Independent Women, Part 11,” the irresistible “Bootylicious,” and “Survivor,” written by Beyoncé after a deejay had joked about the group’s resembling the island on the reality TV show: Who would get thrown off next? The title song was the group’s biggest hit yet. It included the snarky lyrics “You thought I wouldn’t sell / Without you, sold nine million.” LeToya and LaTavia sued for disparagement.
As Destiny’s Child hit the road for a series of sold-out tours (Solange joined the group as a dancer and later filled in for Kelly when Kelly broke her toe), they were confronted with a Beyoncé backlash. Web sites popped up with names like Down With Destiny and Anti Destiny’s Child. “Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate Beyoncé,” read one: “1. Conceited. 2. Kicked LaTavia and LeToya out… . 5. 2-faced… . 7. Daddy’s Little Girl.” To the “haters,” Beyoncé was an egomaniacal diva, a modern-day Diana Ross who hypocritically shook her booty suggestively yet also said she was a devout Methodist. Her mom was obviously a stage mother who pushed her too hard. And Mathew was an evil Svengali who favored his daughter over the others in the group. He was so controlling, it was said, that he wouldn’t let Beyoncé go out on dates, and he was rumored to have made the other girls go to tanning booths so Beyoncé would always be the lightest. Mathew was likened to Joe Jackson, the physically abusive and hard-driving stage father of the Jacksons.
But Beyoncé bore the brunt, and she stood by her father. “A lot of people dumped everything on Beyoncé,” remembered Tina. “They would say things to her in airports—rude, evil things. She was nineteen years old! [Losing LeToya and LaTavia] was a terrible, sad thing, one of the saddest things we’ve ever had to deal with. But it’s life.” The Knowleses ignored it as best they could, though in truth the controversy sold albums. In the aftermath, Beyoncé, who had seemed so sweet and sincere, now came across as defiant, flip, even cynical. The lawsuits? “I thank God for the controversy,” she told Ebony. “It helps me to sell records.” The accusations of hypocrisy for flaunting her sexuality while professing her faith? “It’s entertainment,” she told Newsweek about the revealing outfits, “and I believe God is okay with that.” The claim that she was Daddy’s little girl? She told Newsweek, “Even now I don’t need a man, because I have someone who loves me and supports me without fail.”
Beyoncé left little doubt about how she felt about Mathew on her 2003 solo album, Dangerously in Love, which she said was her serious artistic breakthrough. The album ends with the truly weird “Daddy,” a sentimental song that features a chorus that says, “That’s why I want my unborn son to be like my daddy / I want my husband to be like my daddy.” The song was unlisted, perhaps because Beyoncé was uncomfortable with its on-the-sleeve lyricism. Or perhaps because, on the album that she felt showed she had “evolved into a woman,” she was sounding an awful lot like that little girl at the 1989 Sammys.
Two days before the super bowl, a handful of us stood nervously in a cavernous south Houston photo studio, within sight of Reliant Stadium, waiting for Beyoncé to show up. At around four-thirty, two women entered, but it took a few seconds to realize it was indeed Beyoncé and her assistant; there was no announcement, either from someone else or her own body language, that the sexiest woman walking on the planet was in fact right now walking in the same room as the rest of us. It was almost as if she didn’t want anyone to know she was there. (Beyoncé was expertly handled by her publicists, one who told me she was too tired to do an interview and another who said she was too busy. I would have to watch.)
The photographer broke the ice with Beyoncé by good-naturedly poking fun at her as he shot photos. “You’re way too curvy for Texas Monthly,” he joked. Beyoncé smiled shyly. After a series of pictures in which she had her hands cocked on her hips, he asked her to take them off and place them elsewhere. “No,” she replied matter-of-factly, shaking her dirty-blond hair, “my hips are too big.” Beyoncé, like most other women, is perpetually unhappy with the way she looks. “Easy on the smolder,” the photographer joked, and Beyoncé laughed out loud just as the shutter clicked. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, then began giggling. After a few seconds she asked, “Can’t I just smile?”
Can’t I just smile? Of course, at this stage of her career, Beyoncé can do whatever Beyoncé wants. But on this afternoon, as she trotted off gamely for wardrobe change after wardrobe change and maintained the same winning smile for the millionth time in the past year, she seemed to genuinely still enjoy doing what others want her to do. As I watched, I thought about how Beyoncé is so many things, so many of them contradictory. She’s genuinely sweet, yet she’s a survivor, and survivors are not, on the whole, nice people. She is relentlessly driven to do whatever is necessary—for her career, for her family—and she is able and willing to bulldoze anything or anyone that gets in her way. Yet she seems as uncomfortable in her own skin and as confused about her identity as any other 22-year-old. She’s black yet blond. Bootylicious yet devout. She writes songs of female empowerment because, basically, her father told her to; she recently told People, “We talk about being independent, being strong, and taking care of ourselves, but we want to be domestic.” Beyoncé is, in her father’s words, selling a product, treating the making and selling of music like the making and selling of soft drinks, tailoring the business to what she and her father think the customers want and then trying to reach as many of them as possible. It’s bad, ultimately, for music. But it’s good for business.
As Beyoncé’s shoot finished up, the rest of the family drifted in and out of the studio. Mathew spent most of the time on his cell phone, staking out distant corners and talking animatedly. His daughter would be singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in two days, her upcoming tour was in some kind of peril, and the whole family was late for a reception he was hosting at the his offices for tomorrow’s Hip Hop Summit, which was bringing hundreds of rap music notables to Houston.
Tina arrived last, sporting an explosive mane, and the four took their places on a ladder for a family portrait. Beyoncé reached over and fluffed out her mom’s hair, and the photographer began shooting. He tried to get Mathew to smile. “I’m a gangster,” Mathew said with a wry grin. “It would spoil my image.” Solange reached over and made rabbit ears behind her sister’s head. Beyoncé smiled broadly. As the chorus of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” played on a nearby boom box, they all sang along:
Na na na naaa na na naaa
Na na na na na na naaa
Na na na naa na na na naaaaaaa!
Here, at the start of one of the wildest weekends of their lives, the Knowleses could tune out everyone else and sing along with each other like they used to. The rest of the world could wait, at least for a few moments.
