Tina Knowles was admittedly apprehensive about releasing her Matriarch memoir to the masses.
“I would call my kids and I’d be like, ‘I think I talked too much,’” Knowles, 71, told Michelle Obama during a conversation released via the “IMO” podcast on Friday, May 9. Knowles — the mother of Beyoncé and Solange — explained that she revealed “everything” in her book.
“They were like, ‘What did you put in there?’ Because I sent them their parts,” Knowles continued, referring to her daughters. “I was like, ‘They’re too busy [to read the whole thing].’ Plus, I was scared, so I just held it from them.”
Knowles explained to Beyoncé, 43, and Solange, 38, that she told “my story,” which ended up being about others as well.
“Sometimes, your story includes other people,” she continued. “It was scary. I’ve been up for days too. Between that and Cowboy Carter.”
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Knowles released her Matriarch memoir on April 22 and embarked on a nine-city book tour. (Her conversation with Obama, 61, took place at the Washington, D.C. tour stop on April 30.)
Knowles confirmed that she had “not” gotten any phone calls about the book’s content just yet — from either of her daughters.
“I’m gonna get the call though,” she joked at the time. “I know it already.”
Knowles spoke candidly about Beyoncé and Solange in her memoir, even revealing that she sent them to therapy at a young age. The mother of two also addressed “hurtful” rumors about Beyoncé always wanting a solo career — even during her Destiny’s Child days.
“People oftentimes say that the goal was always for Beyoncé to be solo, but if that were the case, she would have done that out of the gate,” Knowles wrote in the book. “She loved being part of a group.”
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Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland were original members of Destiny’s Child in 1990, when it was still called Girls Tyme. Michelle Williams joined the group in 2000 alongside Farrah Franklin, following the departure of LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson. (Knowles did not detail the other singers’ respective departures in her book.)
Knowles hit back at yearslong claims that Beyoncé — who released her first solo album in 2002 — was the reason the group disbanded.
“Beyoncé saw it as the end of a marriage of 10 years, and she began to grieve it as such,” Knowles wrote. “Rumors and negative stories took hold, casting Beyoncé as the daddy’s girl who made demands, and people even ran with a lie that Kelly only stayed because she was Mathew’s biological child from an affair. It was all incredibly hurtful.”
