Embarrassing father: Who is Mathew Knowles? A man whose life is as messily human as his superstar daughter Beyonce’s is image conscious and controlled.
Who is Mathew Knowles? A man whose life is as messily human as his superstar daughter’s is image conscious and controlled
Nobody controls their image like Beyoncé Knowles. The pop star famously banned photographs from being distributed from her Mrs Carter Show World Tour, and announced the pregnancy of her twins in a highly choreographed Instagram post and website update createdbyoneoftheartworld’smost fashionable photographers. Her past two albums have been accompanied by lavish videos. In short, she is not the kind of woman who would want the birth of her new children to be deployed casually.
However, on Sunday afternoon, that is exactly what happened. Knowles’s father and former manager Mathew Knowles uploaded a post that looked like it may have been created on a free graphics app and read: “Happy Birthday to the twins! Love Granddad”, complete with some stock image balloons. At best, it could be interpreted as postinternet art spotted at a Goldsmiths University graduation show. But it’s certainly not, we imagine, how Beyoncé would have wanted the news to be broken.
Beyoncé and her father have weathered an unusual fatherdaughter relationship. Her childhood was punctuated by spells of his absence — he briefly left her and her mother Tina when she was only two months old — and return, as well as his draconian management of her route into showbusiness. In 1988 he was inspired to mentor Beyoncé after she won the Baby Junior Award at the Sammy Awards and performed at the Sammy Davis Jr-themed ceremony a year later. What’s Mathew Knowles’s background? Until he founded his own music company in 1992, Knowles was a salesman, selling office equipment to medical companies. He gave up the day job to found record label imprints and establish ventures with labels such as Sony Music and Interscope. When did his involvement in Beyoncé’s career begin? He started co-managing Girls Tyme, the predecessor to Nineties girl band Destiny’s Child, the same year and swiftly set the precedent for his management style. Knowles was known for being difficult and demanding. Girls Tyme provided the foundations for Destiny’s Child, with both Kelly Rowland and Beyoncé in the group, but troubles began with member Ashley Davis leaving the band.
By December 1995, Knowles had signed a seven-album deal for Destiny’s Child with Columbia/Sony, and took home a considerable chunk of management fee as a reward. It marked the end of a turbulent year for Beyoncé, whose childhood home was sold in the midst of her parents’ separation. The final line-up of Destiny’s Child wouldn’t be established until 2000, after former members LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett left the group (and later filed lawsuits). How long did they work together for? Decades. Knowles managed Destiny’s Child and then, while the group were still going in the early Noughties, worked on Beyoncé’s solo career. He was credited as an executive producer on her debut album Dangerously in Love, which closed with her first song about him, Daddy. When did it all go wrong? While domestic turmoil and musical legal wrangles had never been far from the scene, the late Noughties were less harmonious for Beyoncé and her father. In 2009, while still married to Tina Knowles, Knowles took a step back to concentrate on the birth of his child with actress Alexsandra Wright. Within a year, a paternity suit would establish that Knowles was the father. Tina filed for divorce.
The next year, Beyoncé ordered an audit through law firm Reed Smith LLP after events promoter Live Nation believed her father has been stealing from her I Am ... tour. The court ruled in Live Nation’s favour.
Beyoncé officially announced that she was no longer being managed by her father in March 2011. What is their relationship like now? Beyoncé has always maintained she has an affectionate relationship that has improved since they stopped working together. The pair patched things up following the birth of her first daughter, Blue Ivy, in 2012, and grandfather and granddaughter are seen playing together in her 2013 documentary Life is But A Dream. In an interview to promote the film, Beyoncé told Oprah that separating from her father was “difficult”, but both “knew it was time”.
However, neither Beyoncé nor Solange turned up to their father’s second wedding, to Gena Avery, and a year later his credibility was further shaken by TaQoya Branscomb, who sued him for paternity for her child born in 2010. A DNA test proved she was correct. What is Knowles’ impact in Beyoncé’s music? Since separating professionally from her father, Beyoncé continued to reference him in her music. In 2014 she released another song that mentioned him, but it was a far cry from the adoration written into Daddy. “Mama, I understand your many sleepless nights / When you sit and you think about father / Or how you tried to be the perfect wife,” she sings in the opening of Ring Off.
When Beyoncé released Lemonade in 2016, she shed more light on the complex relationship with her father. While she hinted at his infidelity (alongside that of her husband, Jay-Z), the song Daddy Lessons also showed the strength that Knowles’ parenting instilled in her. But the struggles between her and her father don’t go unrecognised, a spoken word passage reads: “Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband or your father?” This is accompanied by footage of Blue Ivy and Knowles playing together in the hour-long film that accompanied Lemonade.
Knowles claimed he, like the rest of Beyoncé’s listeners, we left to “speculate” about the meaning of her album. Does Knowles lay any claim to Beyoncé’s work? Not her solo career. If anything, Knowles has been magnanimous about her work, describing her as “a grown ass woman and want to do your own thing. I’m proud of what she’s done as a business owner.”
But Destiny’s Child is another matter. Knowles went on the record in 2015 to say that he has a “few Destiny’s Child projects” and was “extremely hopeful” about a reunion tour. So far, neither has happened. And what else is he up to? Since 2014 Knowles has been running courses in how to make it in showbusiness, unofficially known as ‘Beyoncé Bootcamp’. One writer for MTV attended his seminar, The Entertainment Industry: How Do I Get In?, and established that it basically involved Knowles repeating advice from speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell and lambasting people who had paid to come and listen to him.
He’s also been managing a new girl group called Blush, and uploading self-help videos onto Instagram.