00:00Hi everybody, I'm Carlos Greer and I am here with the man responsible for Beyonce, Solange and Destiny's Child. You know who I'm talking about, the one and only Mr. Matthew Knowles. Matthew, happy new year and happy birthday.
00:15Well, that's a lot of happy college. Yeah, today is my birthday. We had a wonderful new year. You know, this whole week, Blue Ivy, her birthday, my former wife, Tina, her birthday this week. So it's a lot of birthdays in this seven day window. Well, how's the year treating you so far and how are you going to celebrate? Well, I'm going to celebrate just living my passion, doing the things that I'm passionate about. And I always say,
00:45when you live your passion, you never work a day in your life. And so I'm really excited about this opportunity to partner with Fever, Candlelight and get back, fill them back in the thrust of the fire of the music industry. And touring is a big part of it. And just the creation of the show and every aspect that goes on and comes along with it. The marketing is quite, quite exciting.
01:14Well, let's talk about it because that's why you're here today. Destiny's Child, iconic reimagined tribute tour. It's kicking off this month and it's a tribute show with the girls' songs. All of them reimagined, well, some of them reimagined, but there's going to be so much more than just that. What can the audience expect from this show and tell us what exactly it is?
01:33I think it's once the moment you walk into the room and you see the ambiance and 3000 plus candles surrounding a stage
01:46and these amazing quintet musician violinist. It starts there, but also it's just the sophistication of it all. People are really dressed, chic, elegance. That comes with it.
02:06And it just gives you an opportunity to re-imagine the Destiny's Child songs in a different way.
02:13And people I've seen, I've gone to some of Beyonce's shows. I mean, I've seen people get engaged. I've seen people cry.
02:21It's a really moment and experience for many people. And it's a different experience. So that's why I named it Reimagined, because I wanted people to go back and tie in the old days.
02:37And when they heard Destiny's Child the first time and where they were and what was going on in their lives and a feeling that comes along with this.
02:47So that's what the Destiny's Child iconic reimagined tributed. And the ladies deserve a tribute, being the number one female group in the history of music, having the opportunity.
03:00If Michelle Williams wins the Grammy, they are alongside the Beatles as the only group that every member has won a Grammy.
03:10So they're still, it's not over for Destiny's Child.
03:15Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it's going to be a real celebration and it's so deserving.
03:19But let's talk about the beginning because you really did whatever it took to make sure that Destiny's Child was successful.
03:27So briefly walk us through what that journey looked like.
03:30Yeah. I always say it's not the destination. It is the journey. And the journey started back in 1990 when Beyoncé was like 10 years old.
03:42And there was a couple of new managers in Houston that wanted to put together a young En Vogue. That was the initial thoughts.
03:52And so they came to our hair salon and they said, hey, we'd like Beyoncé to be the lead and putting together this new group.
04:00I played a role of just a father dropping off his kid to practice the rehearsal and go play basketball on the Saturday and then go pick her up. That's about the extent of it.
04:12But they lost on Star Search. And when they lost on Star Search, I asked the host, what does a dad do? They're crying.
04:21I don't understand why they competed against a rock band and these guys are in their 40s and these kids are like 10, 11 years old.
04:29And he says, for some reason, everyone who wins consistently on Star Search but lose the first time go on to be successful.
04:38And he started naming Justin Timberlake, Usher, Alanis Marcet, Aaliyah, Boyz II Men, Britney Spears.
04:47He kept going on and on. And I said, well, why? He says they go back and they change. They make changes in the organization, sometimes the members.
04:58And they put together a totally different strategy. And so I went back to school to take music management, artist development, production, went to every seminar that I could to begin my learning growth.
05:13And we went a totally different direction with the band.
05:19Well, Matthew, a lot of people have talent, you know, but Destiny's Child, they really put in the work as kids, as you mentioned.
05:28What was it about their work ethic and talent that made you want to go back, quit your job, go back to school, learn the music business, and focus on making it happen for them?
05:38Well, Carlos, Carlos, I could see that if we aligned the right team, if we got the right songs, the ladies had the passion, as you just said, and the talent to be the very best at it.
05:56And what comes along with passion are work ethics. So they had the work ethics. So it was just that they were young. We have to remember they were young.
06:04And we're talking teenagers, young, young teenagers. So we have to put together structure.
06:10One of the things that made Destiny's Child the best and different, we used to practice failure.
06:17And people literally practice failure. And what do I mean by that?
06:21They didn't know when the lights were going to go off, when the sound would go off or a hill might break, all the things that will happen. We practice that.
06:31So what do you mean when you say you practice it? Were you like tricking them or was it just like something that happened, you know, spontaneously that they didn't know was going to occur?
06:39You were just preparing them for it was it was planned by by management.
06:44But they didn't know once they got on the stage, but they didn't know once they got on the stage that the sound was going to get muted at a certain point.
06:51So they wouldn't, we did that so they wouldn't panic because those things happened.
06:57So when they happened, they had the acapella song already rehearsed in practice.
07:03And instead of like most artists panic and like looking around like deer headlights in their eyes,
07:10they went straight to an acapella song that they were prepared for.
07:15You know, you can watch a BET performance and you can see Michelle slipped.
07:20Well, they were prepared and they actually almost made a routine with it.
07:25You can actually see that happen with Beyonce and Solange on Beyonce's performance where Solange slipped and then they made a routine out of it.
07:34Those things you practice when you're the very best.
07:38So that's how they're, that's how you can fall down and easily get back up practicing failure.
07:43Yes, I have a whole thing about practicing failure.
07:47So, you know, this, this show, it's going to also, it's not just singing.
07:50It's featuring your personal stories about making them Destiny's Child and working with you with your daughter and the band.
07:58What's your favorite Destiny's Child memory?
08:00I've been, um, boy, my favorite memory.
08:07It would be when they performed No, No, No for the first time with Wyclef and Owlens.
08:14And it was their first, it was on, I believe it was on MTV and it was just a look in their eyes and to see that tremendous excitement that, boy, we're on the main stage with MTV and it's people around the world are watching us.
08:34That was a real moment to see that, to see all the hard work and all the failures because people don't know Destiny's Child got dropped by Electra Records.
08:43You know, they lost on Star Search.
08:46They had a number of failures and to see them work through that and to have that moment, it was a real exciting, exciting thing to see.
08:57I still, to this day, when Beyonce performs, I know when she gets in a zone, it's just a certain look that she's fierce and you just know, I know, the fans would know, but I say it every time I see her, okay, she's in her zone now.
09:14So she's still, she's still Sasha Fierce on stage, she still taps into it.
09:19Well, that happened when she was a kid, eight years old and did her first performance in competition against some older junior high school kids.
09:27And we're sitting there waiting for her to perform and she looked at me and her mom and said, hey, I can't wait to get up there and perform because I want to win my trophy and my $100.
09:39And as a dad, I'm trying to curtail her expectations.
09:43I'm saying, you know, just do your best.
09:46These are older kids.
09:47But when she got on that stage, Carlos, we didn't know who she was.
09:50I mean, she, that's when Sasha Fierce came out for the first time because once she got on that stage,
09:57it was a different Beyonce that we didn't even know.
10:00And we were our parents.
10:01Wow, eight years old.
10:03Yes.
10:04Wow.
10:04All right.
10:05You're here with us at Page Six.
10:06And you know we love a good scoop, Matthew.
10:09And people feel like they know everything about the Destiny's Child story.
10:13So tell us something we don't know.
10:15Not only do you not know it, but I hope you have an opportunity to show the photo.
10:23I would love for people to see that in 1992, Girls' Time, which became Destiny's Child, had 11 members.
10:36So this notion of change in Destiny's Child has always happened.
10:44Right.
10:45So how did 11 become 3?
10:50Just transition, time, circumstances, situations that happen.
10:58At one point, the previous managers were trying to get, believe it or not, Carlos, a record deal with dancers.
11:08With just dancers?
11:09They had four lead singers, four dancers.
11:13And they were trying to get a record deal with all eight of them.
11:17At one point, it was the eight, and then there was a rapper.
11:21That was big back then.
11:23That was a rapper.
11:25Then it was a male rapper.
11:27Then it became a female rapper.
11:28So now we're at 10.
11:30Even my niece at one time was in the band, in the group.
11:35So it's just kept over the years just transitioning and getting a better understanding of the marketplace.
11:44But Destiny's Child has constantly been, kind of like Menudo, I think it's called, Menudo, the boy band.
11:53Menudo, yes.
11:54That made a number of changes.
11:56So that's been constant with Destiny's Child.
11:59Yeah.
12:00Did you ever, in a million years, think that they would become one of the biggest girl groups all time,
12:06which, of course, helped launch one of the biggest artists of our time, your daughter, Beyonce?
12:11Well, I think, Carlos, if you really dig deep into our history, you'll know that I was the number one sales rep
12:21in a medical division of Xerox in the world for three out of four years, the best in the world.
12:30I hope that when you live in that environment where someone's the best in the world,
12:39then you understand what's required to be the best, what work ethics are required to be the very best in the world.
12:46So everything that I do and Beyonce and Solange, their level of expectation is not to be good at it,
12:56not to be the best in America, but to have the most Grammys in the world,
13:02to Destiny's Child to be the number one female group in the world, to be the number one sales rep in the world.
13:08You kind of hear this consistency that I'm saying?
13:11Yeah.
13:11Yeah, so you weren't surprised. It's built in. You cultivated it.
13:16Yeah, for me, I wasn't surprised. That was our goal.
13:20Yeah.
13:21You know, had that not been a goal, then it would have been a surprise, right?
13:25But because it was a goal, it was just we reached our goal.
13:30Destiny's Child iconic reimagined tribute kicks off tonight, January 9th, in their hometown of Houston.
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