Becoming Beyoncé

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “Oh, please,” Beyoncé exclaimed. “They’re like my older brothers.”

  “Come on, Beyoncé,” Lyndall told her, “you need to get real, girl. These guys are not your brothers! I’m a man and I know men. These old dudes are just biding their time while they figure out how to get into your drawers.”

  “But that’s not true,” Beyoncé said, sounding indignant. “And you don’t own me, anyway,” she added. “I’m allowed to have friends.”

  Years after that conversation, Lyndall would observe, “All I knew was that I didn’t want her alone with rich and accomplished guys like Jay Z and Snoop Dogg. But she was living the fast life now with guys like that while I was still living at my mom’s and looking for a job. Put it this way: It was starting to look not so good for me.”

  Andretta’s Estate Sues

  Ever since Destiny’s Child became successful, the family and friends of the late Andretta Tillman had felt strongly that she’d not gotten proper recognition as both the act’s original manager and later its co-manager with Mathew Knowles. The well-known and accepted story about Destiny’s Child had somehow transmogrified into one about Mathew abandoning his six-figure job to manage the group and make a reality his daughter’s dream, but usually with nary a word about Andretta. Likely, in terms of branding the group, it was thought to be a better and more concise tale than the more complex and accurate one that would have detailed “Miss Ann’s” crucial role in cultivating the girls, from Girls Tyme through Somethin’ Fresh, the Dolls, Destiny, and then Destiny’s Child.

  Destiny’s Child did dedicate two songs to Andretta: “My Time Has Come (Dedicated to Andretta Tillman)” from the first album, which Tillman heard and enjoyed before her death, and “Outro (Amazing Grace—Dedicated to Andretta Tillman)” on the second, which is an a cappella rendition of the old spiritual. Also, the entire first album was dedicated to Andretta. Moreover, in individual acknowledgments written by each girl, each sent her love to Andretta. Arguably, it could be asked, what more could have been done?

  The answer, as far as the Tillman estate was concerned, was plenty—and it had to do not only with fuller recognition for Andretta, but also a reasonable cut of the money the group had generated since her death, none of which had ever trickled down to the Tillman heirs. “They dedicated a couple of songs to my mother way back when, but the public had to ask, ‘Who the hell is Andretta?’ ” observes her son Armon. “No one knew. They threw her name out there sort of like she was the Knowles family maid!”

  “We even started hearing that Mathew was saying my mother didn’t do anything for the group,” Chris Tillman added. “We didn’t understand it, and we wanted answers.”

  “Even if they had given Armon and Chris $500,000, that would have changed their lives,” Pat Felton said. “After all, they were all but ruined when their mother died. It took years for them to recover. Considering all of the trials, tribulations, and tragedy that happened to Andretta as she worked to make Destiny’s Child famous, for the boys to be left with nothing once the group was a success was a real shame.”

  By the beginning of 2002, Destiny’s Child had sold roughly thirty million albums worldwide. Therefore, the stakes were high.

  Mathew conceded what everyone knew, which was that in 1993 and 1994, he and Andretta had entered into management contracts with each individual member of the group that eventually went on to become Destiny’s Child. The artists agreed to pay management fees equal to 20 percent of gross earnings and a 1 percent royalty, which he and Andretta would spilt.

  But then in 1997—right around the time the girls signed with Columbia/Sony—according to Andretta’s final contract with Mathew she was entitled to just 5 percent of the group’s management income and Mathew was entitled to 15 percent. Both were also entitled to half of 1 percent of royalties. In exchange for this split favoring Mathew, he would pay all expenses.

  The 1 percent royalty point was easy to calculate. In total, it came to $350,000. In fact, Columbia/Sony would later announce that it had been holding half of that amount in an account—meaning $175,000 for Tillman’s heirs—$87,500 for each son.

  But what about the management fee—Andretta’s 5 percent? The amount the Tillman’s heirs would be entitled to if that contract was still binding would take some time to calculate, but it could be many millions of dollars. In fact, the Tillman estate put it at about $30 million, which was more or less a ballpark guess. Mathew said, though, that he and Andretta had agreed to an amendment of their contract stipulating that she would abandon her management fee upon her death, and that her heirs would then only be entitled to that one-half percent royalty—the $175,000. Mathew was happy to give the Tillman heirs that much, but no more.

  The problem, though, was that Mathew couldn’t find the amendment document in which Andretta had abandoned her management commission. Under oath, he would say that “we’re aggressively looking for it.” One would have thought he would have kept such an important contract. However, it’s probably not surprising that documents had gone missing. After all, Andretta had died without a will, which suggests that she really wasn’t thinking in terms of preserving important papers either. Still, this scenario sounded very fishy to the Tillmans. How convenient it was for Mathew, they felt, that this particular amended contract had suddenly gone missing. They put forth the theory that if such an amended deal ever even existed, maybe this was the agreement they’d heard through the grapevine that Tina had Andretta sign at her deathbed. Remember, Pat Felton said she witnessed Tina having Andretta sign something the very morning of her death, though Tina later denied that was the case.

  There were a lot of questions, and the Tillmans felt the only way to address them was to formally litigate. Therefore, in January 2002, the heirs of Andretta Tillman—Armon and Chris, her sons, and Effie Lee, her mother—sued Mathew, Beyoncé, and Kelly, claiming that they had been cheated out of more than $30 million.

  “Denise [Seals] came to my house and said, ‘They need documents and I know you’re a pack rat. You must have something that will get them some money,’ ” recalled Deborah Laday. “She told me, ‘Mathew’s saying he brought Ann in, and you know that’s a lie. We brought her in!’ So a lawyer came to my house and I gave him copies of all of the contracts I had that pre-dated Mathew. I wanted to do anything I could to help Ann’s boys get the money they deserved.”

  As well as questioning the money that should have trickled down to the Tillman heirs, the lawsuit also made quite a few eyebrow-raising allegations about Mathew. For instance, it alleged that he had “failed to inform Ms. Tillman that he had uncontrollable addictions to at least cocaine and extramarital activities.” It further stated that he “failed to inform Ms. Tillman that his addictions to cocaine and extramarital sexual relations impaired his judgment relating to properly supervising minor Artists, impeded his ability to properly managing the finances of his business and/or the Artists.” Also, it maintained that Mathew’s personal challenges caused him to “squander money due and owing Ms. Tillman on drugs and extramarital sexual relations.”

  Attempting to expose Mathew’s private life seemed to most observers to be a tactic designed to force a settlement. The Tillman attorneys had to know that including those personal allegations in the complaint would generate salacious reporting that might tend to embarrass the family, particularly Beyoncé. Indeed, explosive headlines appeared as expected, and the Knowleses would be duly humiliated.

  Beyoncé chose to turn away from the allegations and simply not speak about them. One reporter in Houston ran into her in a restaurant while she was dining with friends and tried to get her to comment on the accusations. Looking up at him, she smiled sweetly and said, “I have nothing to say.” However, when he continued to push, she rose from her chair at the table and left the premises.

  If anything, this difficult situation served to provide Beyoncé with more of a reason to draw a line in the sand where the media’s interest in her personal life was concerned. Slowly she was c
oming to the conclusion that the best thing she could do for herself and her family was simply not to comment about anything other than her professional career, and to do so across the board.

  Obviously, Tina was upset about the suit and about the newspaper coverage. She had loved Armon and Chris since they were little boys. However, as was well known about her by this time, a war against her husband or any member of her family was a war against her. She was asked about it everywhere she went but knew better than to talk about it. Finally, tired of the inquiries, she told a reporter of Mathew, “He’d be dead if he spent $32 million on drugs and sex. My husband works sixteen hours a day. I don’t know when he’d have the time for all this nonsense they’re claiming. And Beyoncé knows in her heart her father hasn’t done the terrible things he’s accused of doing.” Actually, the Tillmans were not claiming that Mathew had spent $32 million on drugs and sex, but rather that they were possibly owed that much from mismanagement conduct.

  Realizing that his family would not be left alone until he made some sort of public statement, Mathew went on the offensive and gave a brief damage-control interview to Star, a popular tabloid. Some observers thought he was completely out of his mind to cooperate with a tabloid on such an explosive story, especially after it was published and they saw the headline: “Beyoncé’s Dad Blows Millions on Drugs and Hookers—Mathew Knowles Interview: ‘I Was a Sex Addict,’ he tells Star.” Actually, it was a clever way to tackle the scandal head-on before it had a chance to completely overwhelm them all. That Mathew chose to speak to the very market he knew would exploit the story and keep it going—the tabloid market—was a savvy way of handling what could have continued to be a prickly problem for the Knowleses. In the interview, he freely admitted that, yes, he had had personal problems with drugs and infidelity in the past. He suggested he had been in rehab twice, and mentioned sexual addiction as being one of his troubling issues.

  After about a month, lurid tales about Mathew all but vanished as the audience that reads tabloids lost interest in the salacious details and—without comment from Beyoncé to keep them fully invested—moved on to the next, big celebrity scandal. What was done was done, though, and now it would be a matter of litigating the true facts of the matter—or whatever facts could be ascertained considering that Andretta Tillman was, sadly, gone and not able to testify on her own behalf.

  Beyoncé’s Deposition

  On November 20, 2001, Beyoncé showed up at the office of her attorney Dwight Jefferson, of Maloney, Jefferson & Dugas in Houston. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, and she was ready for business. Her face was scrubbed clean of most makeup, and she looked far younger than her twenty years. She was wearing a simple pink tank top with a black blazer and black trousers and matching heels. Her blondish hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she had on large gold hoop earrings. Her demeanor was intense and serious.

  A couple of weeks earlier, the lawsuit LaTavia and LeToya had filed against Beyoncé and Kelly had been settled with a cash payout of $850,000 to the two former Destiny’s Child singers. After legal fees and other costs, the girls likely ended up with about $225,000 each. When one considered the money they would have made in years to come as members of Destiny’s Child, it seemed to most people as if they got a pretty raw deal. Clearly, at least in this case, standing up for their principles came with a steep cost. However one chose to look at it, though, one thing was certain: Beyoncé and Kelly were free and clear as far as that particular suit was concerned. Mathew was still on the hook for it, though.

  In order to save time and money, a judge had decided that the two pending suits—the case filed by LaTavia and LeToya (against Mathew) and the one filed by Andretta Tillman’s estate—would be joined into one umbrella litigation since so many of the issues were similar. Also, since Beyoncé and Kelly were still defendants in the Tillman suit (and witnesses in what remained of the LaTavia/LeToya suit against Mathew), they would still be forced to testify in both cases.

  From November 2001 through March 2002, everyone named in these legal cases would be compelled to answer questions by attorneys under oath, in what are called depositions. This is often not an easy process; it can sometimes be combative. Sworn testimony gleaned from these sessions would then be used to formulate each side’s case at the eventual trial. Since she had to go to Los Angeles to start work on her debut major motion picture, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Beyoncé was the first witness to be deposed, which was why she was at her lawyers’ office on this November afternoon.

  Beyoncé hasn’t spoken publicly about her feelings regarding the Tillman case but it’s the view of some of those who knew her then that she never wanted to be a party to any tactic that would minimize Andretta’s role in her success. When she learned that Andretta’s sons had received no money from the success of Destiny’s Child, she was apparently surprised. However in a sworn affidavit she would later give, she said, that as far as she was concerned, when Andretta died, “it ended our relationship with her, contractual or otherwise” and that none of the Tillmans had ever indicated otherwise to her. In fact, she testified she ran into Armon Tillman at a party in December of 2000 who then told her that Pamela Luckett “had told him a bunch of crazy stuff about Destiny’s Child. He asked what was going on with LaToya and LaTavia. I told him it was a long story. Our conservation was a good one and I had no inkling that he thought we owed him anything . . . certainly not millions of dollars.” A week before the deposition, she had a conversation with her friend and former mentor Anthony Moore—Tony Mo.—during which she said, “To think that after everything we went through together it ends up in a courtroom is just unbelievable to me.”

  It seemed that the conundrum as Beyoncé saw it was that in giving Andretta her due, she didn’t want to downplay Mathew’s role in the success of the group. In many ways, things hadn’t changed—it was still a battle between Andretta and Mathew, with Beyoncé squarely in the middle.

  Beyoncé showed up with Tina and Kelly at her side for support. Much to their surprise, however, they found LeToya and LaTavia in the conference room waiting for them. The two were allowed to sit in on the deposition; it was their legal right as plaintiffs in the case. Of course, the two girls hadn’t seen Beyoncé since the group’s breakup. Polite greetings were exchanged before everyone was seated at a conference table.

  One might imagine that having to answer questions about her feelings relating to LaTavia and LeToya as they sat at a conference table with her would have made Beyoncé feel uneasy. However, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. “Does it make you uncomfortable to have your former singing partners here?” the Tillmans’ attorney Benjamin Hall asked her. “No,” she responded simply. When asked why, she answered, “Because, to be honest with you, I’ve got nothing to hide.” When asked if she would be truthful in her answers, Beyoncé said, “Absolutely, yes. I’m always truthful.” The deposition then began. Beyoncé had a stack of fashion magazines next to her at the ready, which she would casually thumb through during breaks.

  During her deposition, Beyoncé was first asked to outline the reasons why LaTavia and LeToya had been replaced in the group. Hours were spent discussing the letter they sent disaffirming their management contract with Mathew, and Beyoncé’s reaction to it and her subsequent depression and then anger, all of which she summarized as “a dark and depressing time in my life.” She said, “I just wanted to get into my car and start driving and never look back.” She also talked about the antagonistic letter she sent the girls, and said she didn’t regret writing it. “I said what I needed to say and what I felt they needed to hear,” she explained. When asked if she thought it had been harsh, she said, “I don’t know. What can I say? Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn’t it?” She then attempted to outline the history of the singing groups in which she’d participated prior to Destiny’s Child, and Andretta’s role in managing each incarnation. She demonstrated a great capacity for remembering details many had long forgotten. She also said she had “nothing but lo
ve for Miss Ann, but if you want to know the truth, she became very sick and my father had no choice but to step in. So,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “it started out with Miss Ann doing all the work, yes, for sure, but then there was sort of a shift and my dad starting doing more.”

  At one point the questioning became tense when Sherry Chandler, representing the Tillman estate, began to interrogate Beyoncé as to exactly who paid for the girls’ stage wardrobe, Andretta or Mathew. Beyoncé tried to make the point that at first it was Andretta, but then Mathew. However, Chandler kept cutting her off by claiming her answer to be “unresponsive.” Finally, Beyoncé had had enough. “Look, I’m doing my best to remember things that happened when I was just a child and she’s being unnecessarily aggressive toward me,” she told her attorney Thomas Fulkerson. “I think she could have a little more respect, don’t you? I’m not used to being talked to like this. It’s not right.” Fulkerson agreed and asked Chandler to tone down the rhetoric.

  Beyoncé was then asked if she knew anything about her father’s alleged drug habits. Her attorney objected and said she didn’t have to answer the question. “But I want to answer it,” she said. The lawyer then remarked, “The witness wishes to answer,” to which Beyoncé firmly stated, “Absolutely not. I don’t know anything about that, at all. My father has only cared about me and my career. I don’t see how he would have time for drugs. It’s a lie.” The attorneys continued to push, but she was adamant. When then asked if she had ever heard of her father having extramarital affairs, her attorney again told her that she didn’t have to respond. This time, she chose to take his advice. Instead, she just glared at the lawyer.

  Beyoncé’s deposition went on for more than eight long hours. It ended only because she began complaining of cramps in her arms and shoulders. “Please, y’all, I’ve had enough,” she said. “I can come back some other day if you have more questions, but I’m definitely done for today.” She was polite, but also firm and decisive. Tina backed her. “I think we can all agree that my daughter’s been cooperative,” she said. “But enough is enough. It’s time for us to go home. Let’s go, Beyoncé,” she said as she started gathering her things. The two women smiled graciously at everyone around the table—LaTavia, LeToya, all of the lawyers representing both sides—and then they got up and took their leave.