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Mathew Knowles Claims He Would NOT Let Beyonce & Destiny's Child Work With R. Kelly Due To His 'Reputation'!

The members of Destiny’s Child can thank Beyonce’s parents for not having to survive R. Kelly
In a new interview with The Metro, Mathew Knowles revealed that he and his then-wife Tina Knowles Lawson went through great lengths to keep the group from working with the alleged pedophile after learning about his “reputation” with underage girls.
Papa Knowles, who managed the group, revealed he had to fight pressure from their record label to avoid recording with Kelly — who was, at the time, the go-to artist to help new acts break into the R&B scene.
Related: Lady GaGa Breaks Her Silence On Working With R. Kelly
But given what Bey’s parents were hearing about the controversial performer, including his ties to late singer Aaliyah, Mathew had to put his foot down. He remembered:

The thing with R. Kelly was, he liked to record late at night, around midnight. And what was different with his studio was that one room had a recording suite, and next door was a club, with 40 or 50 people dancing. R. Kelly was managed by Sony, by someone I won’t name, and at that time, they would almost force you to record with [their] artists. And R. Kelly wasn’t cheap – it was $75,000, plus travel costs, so we’re talking $100,000 for a song. I personally rejected the song, because I didn’t think it was a good song. Not just because of [his] reputation – this was around 1998, we had just begun to hear some of those things.”

Mathew felt that hiring Kelly was not only fiscally irresponsible, but dangerous since his daughter and her bandmates were only 15 and 16 at the time.
Denying Kelly was something of a bold move at the time, as a source explained to Metro:

Record labels would ask R. Kelly to write songs for emerging artists as a way to help them break into the industry and he made several requests for Destiny’s Child. Mathew and Tina rejected all of them because they didn’t want him anywhere near the band which is why they are one of the few acts to debut in the 90s without an R Kelly song in its official discography.”

The Ignition singer did write one song in DC’s back catalogue — Stimulate Me, which was on the soundtrack for Eddie Murphy’s 1999 film Life — but a source insisted that Kelly was not in the studio when Bey, Kelly Rowland, LeToya Luckett, and LaTavia Roberson were recording, adding:

“Mathew didn’t want it on any official Destiny’s Child’s albums so it didn’t appear.”

Bey has never worked with the accused sex cult leader in her solo career, either. A source explained that while their label wanted to make Kelly’s 2008 remix of her single If I Were A Boy an official remix, “Beyonce didn’t give it the all clear so it never happened.”
Mathew has more to say about his experience with Kelly — but he’s apparently saving the rest for his book, Destiny’s Child: The Untold Story. We guess we’ll have to wait until the book drops this summer to find out if there’s more to the story.
[Image via WENN.]

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Jan 10, 2019 09:24am PDT