Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and Solange — and honourary mother to Kelly Rowland — has published her first memoir.
Matriarch: A Memoir details Knowles’ life from growing up on Galveston Island in Texas during segregation through to the present day as a businesswoman and mother to some of the most famous women on the planet.
Beyoncé jokingly asked her mother not to “spill too much Mama Tea” ahead of its publication. While Knowles maintains a dignified silence on certain stories — don’t expect any mention of ‘that’ incident between Solange and Jay-Z in the elevator — there are plenty of fascinating insights and even some surprise revelations.
From a bombshell ending on Knowles’ breast cancer diagnosis to what she really thinks of the rumours around Beyoncé's first pregnancy, here are some of the things we learned from Matriarch:
‘Fake pregnancy’ fury
While Knowles ultimately respected Beyoncé's wishes to not hit back at the press coverage of her eldest daughter’s pregnancy with Blue Ivy, it’s clear it was a challenge. Having suffered through multiple miscarriages, including one at 12 weeks, the family was cautiously delighted when Beyoncé became pregnant in 2011. Knowles vowed to help her daughter keep it a secret, tailoring her dresses to hide her growing bump.
Knowles was furious, then, when images of these dresses were used to fuel rumours in the press that Beyoncé was “faking” her pregnancy. “This sacred time, after such tragedy and pain, was marred by some of the stupidest shit I had ever seen, said Knowles. “I wanted to curse some people out and scream at these losers to set the record straight”.
Beyoncé counselled her mother to ignore “these ignorant people”, but Knowles is clear that the headlines were part of a larger pattern of harassment against celebrities — and particularly galling giving their own foremother’s struggles to keep their children during slavery.
“As a mother, these rumours make me feel helpless, unable to protect my children,” she said. “Y’all are not going to kill my children with this madness.”
‘Hurtful’ lies over Destiny’s Child
Knowles was the stylist for Destiny’s Child, the girl group that propelled Beyoncé and Rowland to stardom, while her ex-husband Mathew Knowles was their manager. That gave her a front row seat to the early lineup changes that sparked headlines when original members LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson departed after their 1999 hit album The Writing’s On The Wall.
“By that winter, sadly LeToya and LeTavia would no longer be with the group. Beyoncé saw it as the end of a marriage of ten years and she began to grieve it as such,” said Knowles.“Rumors and negative stories took hold, casting Beyonce as the daddy’s girl who made demands, and people even ran with a lie that Kelly had only stayed because she was Mathew’s biological child from an affair. It was all incredibly hurtful.”
When Michelle Williams auditioned to join the new line-up, Knowles flew her out volunteered her beauty expertise to give her a makeover — including persuading her to wax off her “moustache”.
Beyoncé didn’t always plan to go solo
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While she was undeniably the breakout star of Destiny’s Child, Knowles insisted it wasn’t her plan to launch a solo career from the get-go. “People oftentimes say the goal was always for Beyonce to be solo, but if that were the case, she would have done that out of the gate. She loved being in a group,” said Knowles.
As proof, she said, Beyonce waited for Rowland to release Simply Deep before she released her first solo album Dangerously in Love. “Beyoncé pushed back her own album so her sister Kelly could take full advantage of the momentum of her own success.”
Going toe-to-toe with Annie Leibovitz
Knowles styled Beyoncé when she was on the cover of the Vanity Fair music issue in 2001. It was shot by the industry legend Annie Leibovitz, although Knowles said she “did not know Leibovitz’s history and portfolio” at the time.
What she did know was that nobody was putting Beyoncé's hair in a bun. “I worked as a model for a hot minute. I noticed that they never hired Black hairstylists so the crew at the show or the shoot didn’t know what to do with Black hair. The solution was always ‘put it in a bun’.”
When Leibovitz asked for Beyonce’s hair to be put in a bun, Knowles stood her ground and insisted Beyonce’s wavy look stayed put.
Jay-Z is the son she never had
Beyoncé's relationship with Jay-Z, which began when she was 18 and he was 30, regularly comes under scrutiny. There’s the age gap, the affair allegations, and now the P-Diddy lawsuit. But Knowles is clear that she approves of her daughter’s husband. “I’ve never had the gift of a natural-born son, but God has given me my sons-in-law,” she said, adding that “Jay is an example to his children”.
Knowles confirmed that Beyoncé and Jay-Z started communicating on the phone after the Vanity Fair cover in 2001, becoming serious when her daughter was 21. Apparently, there was a rival for Beyonce’s heart. “There was another guy in the industry talking to her, a friend who maybe wanted to be more,” said Knowles. “She told me they were both coming to town at the same time.” Knowles asked Beyoncé who she preferred, which clarified the situation.
Beyoncé's wedding dress — and menu
Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 2008 wedding has largely remained a private affair, but Knowles did confirm and add a few details. She made her daughter’s wedding dress herself from white silk as a surprise. The cut was mermaid style — Jay-Z’s preference — and strapless as Beyoncé favoured. White curtains were made to cover the walls and windows of the 25-foot-high ceilings of the New York home to help maintain secrecy. And Knowles cooked a menu of soul food alongside Jay-Z’s grandmother.
Solange’s teen pregnancy
Knowles also discusses the moment that her youngest daughter told her she was pregnant at 17. They were in a car on their way to the 2004 Grammy’s where Beyoncé would be performing and take home five awards for Dangerously in Love. Knowles said she was “upset but not angry” at the news. While she worried for Solange, she could also see that her daughter had experienced a lot of loss at a young age. Her uncle Johnny had died of AIDs, as had her child therapist, and her best friend Marsai had been killed in a drive-by shooting.
There was a family row over Solange’s decision to get married, which devolved into the pregnant teenager running away for two days and pawning her diamond jewelry. But they patched it up for the wedding, which was held at John Travolta’s private resort on Grand Bahama.
The Disney World incident
One of the most shocking moments in the book is when Knowles recalls an early Destiny’s Child concert at Disney World. The organisers gave their white labelmate Jessica Simpson the bigger dressing room, and when Beyonce threw a towel into the crowd of high schoolers the police were called and threatened to arrest Beyoncé if she did it again, telling her “you could have caused a riot out there”.
“It wasn’t just that [Destiny’s Child] were Black, it was that the fans were,” said Knowles. When the teenagers took to the stage again, Knowles recalls, police officers stood onstage holding their handcuffs as a warning.
Medical horror
Knowles ends her memoir on the bombshell of her very recent breast cancer diagnosis. But there is another previously unreported medical incident she relays that is truly horrendous.
In 2004 she was frying fish while on the phone to Solange talking her daughter through how to cook a chicken in a bag. Knowles recalls she was laughing so hard she knocked the skillet over. Boiling oil burned through her Stella McCartney stretch jeans down to the bone. Not only was she in extreme agony, when the emergency services arrived they suspected her then-husband Mathew of hurting her. “Even at a time like this we were suspect,” she recalled. “Presumed guilty.”
Beyoncé is not a car person
People assume that Beyoncé is a fan of cars because she often features classic models in her music videos. But that couldn’t be further from the truth, says he mother. When she recieved her first paycheck of $86,000 from Columbia Records, she used $20,000 of it to buy a van for her church then purchased a a used silver Jaguar convertible.
“The funny thing is Beyoncé found she just is not a car person,” said Knowles. “That Jag is still in storage somewhere, the last car she bought that wasn’t some vintage thing for a video.”
Social media ban for mom
There’s not much relatable about fame on this scale, but Beyonce and Solange’s exasperation with their mother’s social media usage feels very real. “My daughters didn’t want me on social media because they were trying to protect me,” said Knowles. “The were like, ‘Mama, people are so mean on Instagram and they will tear you apart’.” Knowles said she was too old to let that bother her, but she did note she received an upsetting amount of hate on the platform when she announced her second divorce.
