Should one search for an image of the R&B group Destiny’s Child & R. Kelly they’d find that there are few…if any at all.
Why, you ask? Beyonce‘s parents, and the steps they took to shield the band from the alleged paedophile after learning of his ties to the late singer Aaliyah.
A stunning revelation from Mathew Knowles below…
In an interview with ‘The Metro’, Knowles – who managed the group- revealed that he and his then-wife Tina Knowles made the decision to prohibit the girls from working with him even in the face of pressure from their recordto make it happen.
He says it all started when the group was asked to record one of his songs.
I was there, and my former wife Tina was there. The thing with R Kelly was, he liked to record late at night, around midnight. And what was different with his studio was that one room had a recording suite, and next door was a club, with 40 or 50 people dancing. R Kelly was managed by Sony, by someone I won’t name, and at that time, they would almost force you to record with [their] artists. And R Kelly wasn’t cheap – it was $75,000, plus travel costs, so we’re talking $100,000 for a song. ‘I personally rejected the song, because I didn’t think it was a good song. Not just because of [his] reputation – this was around 1998, we had just begun to hear some of those things.’
One of these things was his illegal relationship with Aaliyah and predatory behaviour towards school girls. Mathew says this prompted Tina to create barriers around the group to shield them from the abuse a number of their peers were subjected to as teens because of a lack of parental supervision.
The girls were 15, 16. When they went to the bathroom, Tina would go with them. They did not leave our eyes.
A source close to the ladies added…
Record labels would ask R Kelly to write songs for emerging artists as a way to help them break into the industry and he made several requests for Destiny’s Child. Mathew and Tina rejected all of them because they didn’t want him anywhere near the band which is why they are one of the few acts to debut in the 90s without an R Kelly song in its official discography.
As for 1999’s ‘Stimulate Me‘?
The singer, real name Robert S Kelly, did write one song in Destiny’s Child’s back catalogue – Stimulate Me, which was on the soundtrack for the 1999 Eddie Murphy film Life. However, a source informed us that Kelly was not in the studio when Beyonce, Kelly Rowland, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson were recording with producer Jermaine Dupri, adding: ‘Mathew didn’t want it on any official Destiny’s Child’s albums so it didn’t appear.’
The publication also revealed that Beyonce blocked the ‘Age Ain’t Nothin’ but a Number’ writer from working on her own material and, in an act of solidarity with his victims, successfully blocked his efforts to generate income when he remixed her songs.
Back in 2008 he released a remix of her single ‘If I Were a Boy’. The plan was to have it become an official remix as they are both signed to the label but Beyonce didn’t give it the all clear so it never happened.
In 2001 the group addressed the topic of sexual abuse on their ‘Survivor’ set by way of ‘The Story of Beauty’...penned by Beyonce and Ken Fambro.
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