Becoming Beyoncé

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “But I’m no actor, Mr. Townsend,” the bodyguard said, genuinely frightened.

  “Well, my friend, today you are,” Townsend told him.

  The conceit would be that the bodyguard was a rap superstar who’d just performed in concert, and the A&R woman and Beyoncé were backstage groupies. “Just roll with it,” Townsend told them. “Whatever you think you’d say in this situation, say it. Create a scene. Play with it and have fun.”

  As it happened, the record company employee and guard were so out of their elements and anxious about it, they could barely get through the improvisation. “The more nervous they were, the more relaxed Beyoncé became,” recalled Townsend. “When she realized that she was really in her own lane, she started to get into it. That’s when I could really start seeing her chops, and guess what? She definitely had chops!

  “Beyoncé and I then talked for thirty minutes about the script,” he continued. “ ‘I can’t wait to do the death scene,’ she told me. So I said, ‘Great. Let’s do it. Let me see.’ She must have done that death scene twenty different ways. She rolled around on the carpet in her stilettos. She crawled. I gave her direction like, ‘You just got shot,’ and she immediately reacted. Or, ‘This time, you’ve over a rail in a theater and you look down and you feel your body leaving, leaving, leaving you . . . now,’ and she acted it out. I thought to myself, ‘Okay, cool, she gets it. She’s not afraid to make a fool of herself. She’s not afraid to fail, to look ugly, to make crazy expressions, to yell, to scream. Plus, she’s also fearless.’ And as an actress, if you’re fearless, that’s a major component to being great. Therefore, the next day I went back to the MTV brass and said, ‘She can do it. This girl is an actress. Trust me. We need to cast her in this movie.’ And we did.

  “She was a gladiator throughout the entire production,” he concluded. “When the dailies started coming in, the MTV guys said, ‘She’s never acted before? Are you sure? Because she’s so damn good!’ ”

  Carmen: A Hip Hopera was positioned by Beyoncé’s creative team—led, of course, by Mathew—as an experiment to see just how well she might perform as an actress. The venture was a success. Besides her capable acting, Beyoncé looked great in the wardrobe—especially a crimson sequined dress that in her first few scenes shows off her legs to optimal effect. Numerous shots linger on her svelte curves.

  Largely because of her prior work in music videos, Beyoncé seemed completely prepared to project herself in the best possible way in Carmen: A Hip Hopera. She intuitively knew her best angles; she understood not only how to make the most of each of her scenes, but also how to be generous to her fellow actors by allowing them to shine too. It helps a lot that the dialogue is punctuated by rap numbers (which essentially drive the storyline) and occasional singing; one song, “If Looks Could Kill (You Would Be Dead),” by Beyoncé and Mos Def, is a real standout. Today some critics feel that she is better in this, her acting debut, than in many of her subsequent movies.

  Beyoncé explained of her role, “It’s very risqué, and I wouldn’t do any of the things she does in real life. I was concerned about my image,” she admitted, “and how the kids—my audience—would take it.

  “For instance, there’s a seduction scene that I thought was a little too R-rated. There were moments I wanted to tone down. Robert was cool. He didn’t want me to play anything that made me uncomfortable. Somehow, we made it work.

  “I had my eyes wide open the whole time,” she recalled. “Here I was, this kid from Houston with no acting experience telling this amazing director how I wanted to play the role. I felt like I had no business doing that. But in the end, I knew that it was going to be my image up there on the screen and I had to protect it. Destiny’s Child is sexy, but don’t get it twisted: We’re not bad girls.”

  The filming of Carmen on a soundstage on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood took Beyoncé miles away from her comfort zone of Houston family and friends, and catapulted her into a brand-new world. She was surrounded by a different set of people whose major passion wasn’t music, it was acting. “My downtime during Carmen forced me to learn how to talk to people,” she would say, “to let my guard down and be myself—all of that stuff that most girls probably learn how to do when they’re thirteen.”

  Throughout the process of filming, Beyoncé forced herself to be open to new points of view—and sometimes even conflict—from wardrobe stylists, makeup artists, technicians, other actors, and, of course, director Townsend. “I found that there really are good people in the world,” she recalled, “that maybe I didn’t have to have my guard up all the time. I was always so scared, thinking people were out to get me. I don’t want to say that’s how I was raised, but definitely we closed ranks in my family.”

  Carmen: A Hip Hopera would air on MTV on May 8, 2001.

  Enter Jay Z

  It was early January 2002. Beyoncé, now twenty, was putting the finishing touches on Destiny Child’s third album before going to Los Angeles to work on the film Austin Powers in Goldmember, with Mike Myers. It would be her second acting role. Though she was nervous about it, she’d been somewhat boosted by her success in Carmen: A Hip Hopera and had confidence that she could pull it off. Tina would be joining her on the West Coast in a couple of weeks. She had to stay in Houston for a while and be available to sit for legal depositions concerning the lawsuits that had been filed by LaTavia and LeToya.

  One evening before Beyoncé departed, she, Kelly, Tina, and two friends of theirs who lived in Houston went out for dinner at their favorite soul food restaurant, This Is It, in Houston. Beyoncé started the evening off by talking about the way it had ended with Lyndall. “Now I don’t even know what’s out there for me,” she lamented.

  “Well, what about Jay?” Kelly wanted to know, speaking of Jay Z. (Most people in his world call him Jay.) Beyoncé shrugged. “I’m still trying to get past Lyndall. I guess I have no choice but to try.”

  Beyoncé’s makeup artist, Billy B., concluded, “Here’s the truth. Lyndall had made it easy for Beyoncé. He let her off the hook, gave her a reason to move on, because all of us who knew her agreed that if Lyndall had pushed just a little harder, she might still be with him! He gave up too fast. She wasn’t going to move on unless she had no choice, because that’s just who she was at the time—loyal to Lyndall, or, maybe more to the point, loyal to the idea of Lyndall. She would have stayed with him ’till the cows came home. But at the end of the day, a major star like Beyoncé Knowles does not end up with a nice kid from the block named Lyndall Locke.”

  “I definitely believe that Lyndall intentionally pushed Beyoncé away,” said his mother, Lydia. “I think he knew on some level that the only way both could truly grow into adulthood was separate and apart from one another. He did it for her as much as for himself.”

  Beyoncé had met Jay Z a few months earlier as a result of a song called “I Got It” by the rapper/singer Amil (Amil Kahala Whitehead). Mathew had cut a deal with Roc-A-Fella Records, Jay Z’s label, for Beyoncé to appear on the recording as an experiment just to put her in the public eye as a solo act. This was back in early 2000, around the time of the LaTavia and LeToya disagreements, when Beyoncé was waffling about a career sans Destiny’s Child.

  When Beyoncé showed up in the studio to record her part of Amil’s song, Amil wasn’t present for the session. Beyoncé raced through her parts of the song quickly, leaving the studio feeling she’d done her best. A few days later, Jay called to tell her he admired her work and wanted to talk to her about a possible duet with him. She was intrigued, as was Mathew when she told him about it. There was no arguing that Jay Z was one of the most—if not the most—successful stars in the rap universe. What would it mean for Beyoncé’s career to record a duet with him? Father and daughter agreed that it could be very interesting.

  On October 20, 2001, Destiny’s Child was on the bill with Jay Z and dozens of other acts at Madison Square Garden for the “Concert for New York City.” This was a benefit show to honor n
ot only the first responders from the New York Fire and Police departments to the tragedy of 9/11, but also those lost that tragic morning. There were dozens of stars on the bill, though Beyoncé didn’t know most of them. That wasn’t unusual. In fact, at about this time, MTV had asked her to work the red carpet for them, interviewing celebrities as they arrived for the MTV Movie Awards. The problem was that she didn’t recognize any of the celebrities. Her makeup artist, Billy B., had to race up to her as each star approached and whisper the name in her ear: “That’s Jim Carrey and his wife!” “That’s Robert Downey!” He recalled, “She’d been working so hard for so long, she was completely out of touch with pop culture. We laughed our asses off that day, it was hysterical.” Jay Z, though, was someone Beyoncé very much admired, so when she finally met him backstage at the Garden, she was impressed, as were Kelly and Michelle. When he casually asked for her number, she gave it to him. For the next couple of months, they talked on the telephone from time to time, getting to know one another.

  A couple months later, Jay visited Beyoncé in Houston. “My sister Cheryl [LaTavia’s mother] happened to be with Beyoncé when she saw Jay Z,” recalled Yvonne Boyd. “She told me that while she was talking to Beyoncé, she was watching Jay Z out of the corner of her eye. He was talking to one of his friends and motioning toward Beyoncé. Cheryl thought she could read his lips and that he said, ‘I’m gonna get her.’ ”

  Jay may have been self-assured, cocky even, as a result of his success, but apparently he did have certain self-esteem issues when he was a kid, at least according to his mentor, Jaz-O. “They talked about him bad when he was young, calling him ‘Big-Lipped Shawn’ and names like that,” Jaz-O recalled. “But by the time he met Beyoncé, it wasn’t about his looks anyway. It was, ‘Okay, now, I got money. I got prestige. I got all street hustlers wanting to be me. I got rap artists wanting to spit like me. My stock is way up. So now I need a super prom queen.’ Therefore, as a man growing into his own power, he would endeavor to pursue the most attractive girl out of the pack.”

  Before Beyoncé, Jay had gone from girl to girl. He was once involved with the singer Blu Cantrell; he also dated the late singer Aaliyah and the actress Rosario Dawson. It was also reported that a model named Shennelle Scott gave birth to a baby fathered by Jay. There are a couple of other reports like this one as well, other women who claim that Jay fathered their children before he was involved with Beyoncé. Jay Z has always denied they are true. “There were girls around,” his friend Chenise Wilson told Jay’s biographer Zack O’Malley, “but that wasn’t his thing, being in girls’ faces. He had his share, but he wasn’t the kind of guy with a whole lot of girls. Jay is a very particular guy.”

  “He had his own way, know what I’m sayin’?” observed DeHaven Irby, a childhood friend of Jay Z’s. “His own swag. He wasn’t aggressive, he was smooth. Still, he was a player. I don’t think Beyoncé could be described in the same way.”

  Another friend of Jay’s reports, “He was a smooth talker, especially back then. He told Beyoncé, ‘I’ve been with a lot of women, but I was always looking for you, girl.’ It was a good line, but I’m not sure it landed the way Jay hoped.”

  Though Beyoncé and Jay were very different, Tina noted that lasting romance often grows from a good friendship and recalled that she “wasn’t exactly crazy” about Mathew when she first started dating him, but that he later grew on her. She suggested that Beyoncé give Jay a chance, that she at least wait until she went out on a date with him before she made a decision about him. Though Beyoncé said she’d do as her mom suggested, she didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. Or as her uncle Larry Beyincé (Tina’s brother and Angie’s father) later put it, “He was after her and she wasn’t interested. She told me she wasn’t particularly fond of him. I heard rumors that they were together and she told me no. You know how women get that, like, ‘Ewww.’ I guess she wasn’t attracted to him.”

  If Jay did have his sights set on Beyoncé, he couldn’t have selected a person more unlike himself. Certainly one of the aspects of his life that Beyoncé couldn’t really relate to was his materialistic side. For him, everything was about money, and he would be the first to admit it. With his designer clothes, his platinum and gold jewelry, his private jets . . . everything about Jay spelled out success, in arguably the most crass, blatant terms. But that’s the hip-hop world in a nutshell, really. The culture is all about materialistic excess. “Hell, yeah, for as long as I’ve known him, Jay has been motivated by money,” observed Choke No Joke (whose real name is Arthur Alston); he worked as Damon Dash’s videographer for Roc-A-Fella Records from 2000 to 2005. “Beyoncé is motivated by the challenge and the thrill of victory, not by money. You never hear her brag about money. I mean, she may name-drop some handbags, perfume, stuff like that in her lyrics, but her world does not revolve around materialism and riches, like Jay’s. You couldn’t even tell me what kind of car she drives.”

  In contrast to Jay Z, Beyoncé was, at this time of her life, in a “saving for a rainy day” phase. For instance, she and her good friend Taura Stinson visited the Galleria mall in Houston, shopping for new clothes. Beyoncé walked into the Christian Dior store and began admiring a floor-length tutu. Its cost was $2,200. “That is really cute,” Taura told her. “You could wear it with a leather jacket! The contrast would be crazy!” Beyoncé studied the dress critically. “But can I afford this?” she asked. “I mean, two thousand dollars?” In fact, around this time she was in negotiations for a condominium in Miami—in a section called “Millionaire’s Row”—and would also purchase two more condos there, including a studio apartment that was said to be merely a place for her and her guests to change their clothes after going to the beach.) “I mean, those doggone condos are going to wipe me out!” she exclaimed. “There’s no way I can afford this dress,” she decided as she carefully put it back on the rack.” Taura laughed. “Girl, how many hit records have you had? Please! Of course you can afford that dress.” Beyoncé’s mind was made up, though. No dress. “I just have to be more sensible than that,” concluded the woman who is today, thirteen years later, worth about a half billion dollars.

  “Bootylicious”

  Oh, hell no,” Mathew Knowles said. “Hell no!” He was on the telephone with Dan Workman, asking about a song Beyoncé had just finished recording at SugarHill Recording Studios for the third Destiny’s Child album. When Dan told him that the tune was called “Bootylicious,” Mathew exploded. “ ‘Bootylicious’? What is that about?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s sort of a female empowerment song about being proud of . . . you know . . . your big . . . butt,” Dan said. In that moment, he suddenly wasn’t feeling very confident about the song.

  “About what?” Mathew asked.

  “Um . . . you know . . . about having a big butt, and . . . um . . . being . . . proud of it,” Dan repeated, stammering. “I mean, she’s saying something like, ‘I don’t think you’re ready for this . . . um . . . jelly.’ ”

  “Oh, hell no,” Mathew repeated. “Beyoncé ain’t sayin’ no shit like that on no record.”

  “But you really ought to hear it first,” Dan said. “I sent you a rough mix tape. Listen to it, Mathew.”

  “Look, my daughter ain’t putting out no song about having no big butt,” Mathew said. “You can count on that!” And with that, he hung up.

  The next day, he called back. He had finally listened to the tape. “Goddamn!” he exclaimed. “That is a hit, isn’t it, Dan? I mean, that’s a number one record!”

  “Told you so,” Dan Workman said, laughing. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “By the time we got to the third album, it was really just Beyoncé doing the writing and producing,” recalled Workman. As he remembered it, now there were no other producers in the room, at least not on the sessions he engineered. He recalled that Beyoncé would always come into the studio with a stack of CDs of tracks she’d been listening to at the time. She’d receive dozens of these tracks on a w
eekly basis, all submitted to her by various producers around the country who wanted to participate in a Destiny’s Child project. After reviewing them, she’d select her favorites. She would write lyrics for the melodies she had chosen, and then enter the studio and put it all together—her lyrics with the tracks. Often she would add elements to the track herself, maybe go back in and make adjustments to what she’d been sent—which might require bringing musicians into the studio. In that case, she would end up with a producer’s credit.

  “One morning she came into the studio with this track she liked a lot because of a Stevie Nicks guitar riff at its beginning,” Workman remembered. “It was from Nicks’s song ‘Edge of Seventeen,’ from her [1981] solo album Bella Donna.”

  Beyoncé told Dan she’d first heard the track on a plane on the way to Japan, and thought it was interesting. The tape had been submitted to her by 8Bit—the former Rob Fusari. She and 8Bit had for the last couple of weeks been going back and forth on the telephone, composing lyrics for it. Though Fusari would be credited on the final product, he and Beyoncé would never actually be in the same room together while coming up with those lyrics, which was not unusual given her hectic schedule. These days a lot of songs were cowritten with people on the other end of a phone line. Now that much of it was done, Beyoncé sat with her legs crossed Indian-style on the wooden effects console behind Workman and began fine-tuning the lyrics, putting pencil to pad: “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly / ’cause my body’s too bootylicious.” As she did so, Kelly Rowland passed the time by watching Forrest Gump on a portable DVD player. Michelle wasn’t present. “We laughed when Kelly started calling me Lieutenant Dad, after the Gary Sinise character in the movie,” Workman recalled.

  “As I’m listening to Beyoncé go over and over the lyrics out loud, I was intrigued,” he remembered. “When I asked her about the lyrics, she said, ‘My whole thing is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a full-figured girl or what your body looks like, you should be proud of it.’ She said she’d been at a radio station interview and one of the disc jockeys made a crack about her being a little thicker than the other girls. ‘Young girls today get this message constantly from fashion magazines and TV commercials that you have to be a size two to be sexy,’ she told me. ‘What I want to say to women is, “No, you don’t. You can be full-figured. You can have a little jelly. Just wear it proudly.” That’s what “Bootylicious” is about.’ ”