Acknowledgements

To Jules and Flora. Crazy in Love is only the half of it.

To all the dear Easleas, Absaloms and Batcocks.

To Mr Graham James Brown, Wendy, Nathan and Katy.

For the Wolstanton Cultural Quarter (it’ll never leave you) and the Leigh-On-Sea scene.

To Mr Chris Charlesworth, Mr David Barraclough, Ms Jacqui Black and Miss Lucy Beevor.

Metal (Chalkwell Park) rules. The Railway Hotel, Southend-On-Sea.

To Nick and Fi, Curly Dan and DanTan Clan, Grandmaster Adam, Rachel, Simon and Southern Fi, Chadders™, Hammo™, JC, Uncle Al, BMK, Bernobie, Andreas Straße, TFH, Selv, Pete, Debs and Tiny Pete, Andy, Ronnie, Harland, Amelia, Isaac, Nicky and the Jazz Magus.

To RC, Mojo, UMSM, bbc.co.uk, big love.

To Nigel, Jason, Helen, Libster, Hubert, Mappa and co. – that was a hoot.

To George and Ivy. What do you do? This is what I do.

To FM Switch Off. Keep playing that anti-disco music with a disco beat.

Postscript: 4 Ever?

The above quotation is extremely salient. Beyoncé has spent the past 15 years growing up in public. The tiny acts of rebellion like smoking in videos, wearing T-shirts with the legend ‘punk ass motherfucker’ emblazoned across the front and hanging out with (and marrying) rappers are all small signs of defiance and maturity. So closely surrounded by her family, she is now a 30-year-old woman, no longer the 17-year-old girl of ‘No, No, No’. She has now experienced the life that she only heard about in the Headliners hair salon in Houston.

Beyoncé has become a worldwide phenomenon. She has a brand that is known across the globe. “The deal is that Beyoncé can sell us all these products,” Staffordshire University professor Ellis Cashmore stated in his paper ‘Buying Beyoncé’. “But in the process she also sells us something else, something to assuage white guilt. She has become a moving advert that racism, while it might still be present in American society, is no longer a horrendous monster but an irritating mosquito that can be swatted away.”

The rise of Beyoncé has gone hand in hand with dizzying changes in how music is delivered to the masses; when she began there was no social media, the Internet was still relatively new in its transition to the World Wide Web; Facebook (founded 2004), YouTube (2005) and Twitter (2006) were simply gleams in their inventors’ eyes. Every step of the way, Beyoncé’s team and Sony Music has ensured that all these bases were covered, marketing to the masses in the process. At the time of writing, Beyoncé has over a million people following her on Twitter and her Facebook site has 20,134,543 followers.

It is telling when one visits the Destiny’s Child website. When the group went their separate ways in 2005, all three members had the links to their newly established sites on the Destiny’s Child page. Given the ephemeral nature of the net, nobody expected these sites to last for long, but if you look in 2011, it is only Beyoncé’s that is still active. Kelly Rowland has enjoyed success, as has Michelle Williams, but not even their highest highs compare even marginally with the achievements of Beyoncé.

Beyoncé’s relationship with Jay-Z continues to generate huge interest. “There is something compelling about her marriage,” The Daily Telegraph wrote in 2008. “The bringing together of Jay-Z, the former drug dealer and hustler from Bedford-Stuyvesant in the wrong part of Brooklyn, and God-fearing, clean-living, self-improving Beyoncé from the posh school in the nice, air-conditioned part of Texas. Together they have carved out a new blueprint for black entertainers, making the key leap from being mere employees to being autonomous business people.” The manner in which Beyoncé and Jay-Z conduct their business and their relationship is refreshing to say the least in the current transient climate. In Jay-Z’s 2010 autobiography, Decoded, Beyoncé is not mentioned a single time, apart from indirectly in the footnote to his lyric ‘Operation Corporate Takeover’. For the line “the writing’s on the wall, like my lady, right baby?” the footnote simply says, “The Writing’s On The Wall was the name of the record album from Destiny’s Child.”

Maura Johnston in The Village Voice posited an interesting theory about Beyoncé’s continual upscaling of her career as a mirror of the decline in the recorded music industry. “One could say that this overreaching in pop is an understandable response to the freefall the industry has been in, the competition music has from not just itself but from other distractions (TV, video games, online personals, interaction with other people); it’s an attempt to maximise ins, sort of like when the bagel place on your block that has been hurting decides to incorporate a frozen yogurt machine, or a burrito counter. It’s all there, sure. But is it satisfying?” Time will tell how satisfying Beyoncé remains, but already, she has outlasted all the TLCs, SWVs and En Vogues, who were her early inspiration and peers.

“It’s a job. In real life I’m not like that,” these words from her 2004 Rolling Stone interview provide her critics with sufficient ammunition to use against her, that she somehow doesn’t mean what she is doing, it is all an act. Because of her look and appearance, one immediately assumes that Beyoncé is far older than she is, and she has been doing this professionally since she was 10 years old. Even she is amazed by her longevity, at what is now a 20-year career. “I never imagined I’d have as much success as I’ve had,” she told Cosmopolitan in March 2011. “I thought it would be great just to get a record out. I never imagined the extent of what I’ve achieved. I never imagined the awards, the movies … I still can’t believe it. I’m grateful for all of it and don’t take it for granted. When I do something, I try and do it as well as I can.”

She is ubiquitous and revered. As she turned 30 in September 2011, the master plan forged by Mathew and Tina during the Nineties in Houston – when she missed the opportunities that regular teenagers had in order to practice and strive for greatness – had paid off. By the time of her birthday, she had performed triumphantly at Glastonbury, seen 4 sit atop the US and the UK charts and, as she finally announced her pregnancy at the VMA awards on 28th August, Beyoncé created a world tweeting record with the social network Twitter ablaze with 8,868 tweets per second at 10:35 p.m. It was the greatest traffic that Twitter had had since its inception, beating events such as the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and the inauguration of Barack Obama. She has all the grace and stature of predecessors such as Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin, yet with little of the diva-esque baggage. Her songs are known throughout the world, and her image, that of a positive, go-ahead woman who values hard work and decency in order to produce high quality spectacles, has made her a role model to thousands.

Beyoncé has achieved all of the goals she set out to when she started as a naive teenager. Although she had the high expectations of a young girl, it would have seemed impossible for her to scale quite so many heights. However her music has changed, Beyoncé has remained true to her core beliefs. “Power means happiness, power means hard work and sacrifice. To me, it’s about setting a good example, and not abusing your power! You still have to have humility: I’ve seen how you can lead by example, and not by fear. My visit to Egypt was a really big inspiration for me. Once the sun went down, I saw not one woman; it was shocking and fascinating to me, because it was so extreme. I saw thousands of men walking down the street, socialising in bars, praying in mosques – and no women. I felt really proud when I performed and saw the strength that the women were getting through the music. I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‘Independent Women Part I’ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realised that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.” Given the amount of speculation there has been about her life and career, Beyoncé has remained true to herself. Her plan to achieve so much and then start a family seems to be running to course, with her announcement that she wanted the audience to “feel the love that’s growing inside of me,” as she sang the standout track from 4, ‘Love On Top,’ at the VMA Awards.

And she’s only 30.

And she released ‘Crazy In Love’, a tune that cannot fail to melt even the hardest of hearts.

UK Discography

1) ALBUMS

DESTINY’S CHILD

Destiny’s Child
Columbia, 1998

Second Nature / No, No, No Part 2 / With Me Part 1 / Tell Me / Bridges / No, No, No Part 1 / With Me Part 2 / Show Me The Way / Killing Time / Illusion / Birthday / Sail On / My Time Has Come / Know That / You’re The Only One / No, No, No (Camdino Soul Extended Remix) / DubiLLusions

The Writing’s On The Wall

Columbia, 1999

Intro (The Writing’s On The Wall) / So Good / Bills, Bills, Bills /

Confessions / Bug A Boo / Temptation / Now That She’s Gone / Where’d You Go / Hey Ladies / If You Leave / Jumpin’, Jumpin’ / Say My Name / She Can’t Love You / Stay / Sweet Sixteen / Outro (Amazing Grace … Dedicated To Andretta Tillman) / Get On The Bus

Survivor

Columbia, 2001

Independent Women Part I / Survivor / Bootylicious / Nasty Girl / Apple Pie À La Mode / Sexy Daddy / Perfect Man / Independent Women Part II / Happy Face / Dance With Me / My Heart Still Beats / Emotion / Brown Eyes / Dangerously In Love / The Story Of Beauty / Gospel Medley (Dedicated to Andretta Tillman) / Outro (DC-3) Thank You

8 Days Of Christmas

Music World Music / Columbia, 2001

8 Days Of Christmas / Winter Paradise / A ‘DC’ Christmas Medley / Silent Night / Little Drummer Boy / Do You Hear What I Hear / White Christmas / Platinum Bells / O’ Holy Night / Spread A Little Love On Christmas Day / This Christmas / Opera Of The Bells / The Proud Family (Solange feat. Destiny’s Child)

This Is The Remix

Columbia, 2002

No, No, No Part 2 (feat. Wyclef Jean Extended Version) / Emotion (The Neptunes Remix) / Bootylicious (Rockwilder Remix) / Say My Name (Timbaland Remix) / Bug A Boo (Refugee Camp Remix feat. Wyclef Jean) / Dot (The E-Poppi Mix) / Survivor (Remix feat. Da Brat Extended Version) / Independent Women Part II / Nasty Girl (Maurice’s Nu Soul Remix Radio Edit) / Jumpin’ Jumpin’ (Remix Extended Version feat. Jermaine Dupri, Da Brat and Lil Bow Wow) / Bills, Bills, Bills (Maurice’s Xclusive Livegig Mix) / So Good (Maurice’s Soul Remix) / Heard A Word (Michelle Williams)

Destiny Fulfilled

Sony Urban Music / Columbia, 2004

Lose My Breath / Soldier / Cater 2 U / T-Shirt / Is She The Reason / Girl / Bad Habit / If / Free / Through With Love / Love / Game Over

#1’s

Sony Urban Music / Columbia, 2005

Stand Up For Love / Independent Women Part I / Survivor / Soldier / Check On It / Jumpin’, Jumpin’ / Lose My Breath / Say My Name / Emotion / Bug A Boo / Bootylicious / Bills, Bills, Bills / Girl / No, No, No Part 2 / Cater 2 U / Feel The Same Way I Do BEYONCÉ

Dangerously In Love

Columbia, 2003

Crazy In Love / Naughty Girl/ Baby Boy / Hip Hop Star / Be With You / Me, Myself And I / Yes / Signs / Speechless / That’s How You Like It / The Closer I Get To You / Dangerously In Love 2 / Beyoncé Interlude / Gift From Virgo / Work It Out / 03 Bonnie & Clyde

B’Day

Sony Urban Music / Columbia, 2006

Déjà Vu / Get Me Bodied / Suga Mama / Upgrade U / Ring The Alarm / Kitty Kat / Freakum Dress / Green Light / Irreplaceable / Resentment / Encore For The Fans (Listen)

I Am …

Sony Music / Columbia, 2008

If I Were A Boy / Halo / Disappear / Broken-Hearted Girl / Ave Maria / Smash Into You / Satellites / That’s Why You’re Beautiful

Sasha Fierce

Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) / Radio / Diva / Sweet Dreams / Video Phone / Hello / Ego / Scared Of Lonely

I Am … World Tour

Sony Music / Columbia, 2010

Intro / Crazy In Love – Let Me Clear My Throat / Naughty Girl / Tomorrow I Am … Sasha Fierce / Freakum Dress / Get Me Bodied / Smash Into You / Ave Maria / Broken-Hearted Girl / If I Were A Boy – You Oughtta Know / Robot / Diva / Radio / Socks And Stilettos / Ego / Hello / Sasha Vs Beyoncé / Baby Boy – Why Don’t You Love Me (No, No, No) / Irreplaceable / Check On It / Bootylicious / Upgrade U / Video Phone / Are You Filming Me With That / Say My Name / At Last / Listen / Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) / Halo

4

Sony Music / Columbia, 2011

1+1/ I Care / I Miss You / Best Thing I Never Had / Party / Rather Die Young / Start Over / Love On Top / Countdown / End Of Time / I Was Here /Run The World (Girls)

2) SIGNIFICANT SOUNDTRACK APPEARANCES

Men In Black

Sony Music / Columbia, 1997

Killin’ Time (Destiny’s Child)

Austin Powers In Goldmember (Music From & Inspired By The Motion Picture)

Maverick, 2002

Work It Out (Beyoncé)

Hey Goldmember (Beyoncé)

The Fighting Temptations

Sony Music Soundtrax, 2003

Fighting Temptation (Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, MC Lyte and Free)

I Know (Destiny’s Child)

Fever (Beyoncé)

Everything I Do (Beyoncé and Bilal)

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Beyoncé)

He Still Loves Me (Beyoncé and Walter Williams, Sr.)

Time To Come Home (Beyoncé, Angie Stone and Melba Moore)

Summertime (Beyoncé feat. P. Diddy)

The Pink Panther

Sony Music, 2006

Check On It (Beyoncé feat. Slim Thug)

A Woman Like Me (Beyoncé)

Dreamgirls

Sony Music Soundtrax, 2006

Move (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Fake Your Way To the Top (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose and Eddie Murphy)

Cadillac Car (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose, Eddie

Murphy, Laura Bell Bundy, Rory O’Malley and Anne Warren)

Steppin’ To the Bad Side (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose, Hinton Battle, Jamie Foxx and Keith Robinson)

I Want You Baby (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose and Eddie Murphy)

Family (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson and Jamie Foxx)

Dreamgirls (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Heavy (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

It’s All Over (Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose, Jamie Foxx, Keith Robinson and Sharon Leal)

Love Love You Baby (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

I’m Somebody (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Lorrell Loves Kimmy / Family (Reprise) (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Step On Over (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

One Night Only (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Listen (Beyoncé)

Hard To Say (Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Dreamgirls (Finale) (Jennifer Hudson, Sharon Leal, Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose)

Family (End Title) (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé)

When I First Saw You (Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé)

One Night Only (Dance Mix) (Sharon Leal and Beyoncé)

Cadillac Records

Music World Entertainment, 2008

All I Could Do Is Cry / At Last / I’d Rather Go Blind / Once In A

Lifetime / Trust In Me

3) SINGLES

DESTINY’S CHILD

1997

No, No, No Part 2

1998

With Me

Get On The Bus

1999

Bills, Bills, Bills

Bug A Boo

2000

Say My Name

Jumpin’, Jumpin’

Independent Women Part I

2001

Survivor

Bootylicious

Emotion

2002

Nasty Girl (import)

2004

Lose My Breath

Soldier

2005

Girl

Cater 2 U (import)

Stand Up For Love

BEYONCÉ

2002

Work It Out

2003

Crazy In Love (with Jay-Z)

Baby Boy (with Sean Paul)

Me, Myself And I

2004

Naughty Girl

2005

Check On It (with Slim Thug)

2006

Déjà Vu (with Jay-Z)

Ring The Alarm (import)

Irreplaceable

Listen

2007

Beautiful Liar (with Shakira)

Green Light

2008

If I Were A Boy

Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

2009

Diva (import)

Halo

Ego

Sweet Dreams

Broken-Hearted Girl

Video Phone (with Lady Gaga)

2010

Telephone (with Lady Gaga)

2011

Run The World (Girls)

4) SELECTED DVDs

Beyoncé Live At Wembley

Columbia, 2004

Baby Boy / Naughty Girl / Fever / Hip Hop Star / Yes / Work It Out / Gift From Virgo / Be With You / Speechless / DC Medley (Bug A Boo – No, No, No Part 2 – Bootylicious – Jumpin’, Jumpin’ – Say My Name – Independent Women Part I – 03 Bonnie & Clyde – Survivor) / Me, Myself and I / Summertime / Dangerously In Love / Crazy In Love

SPECIAL FEATURES: Backstage / Staging – Choreography / Beyoncé’s Dressing Room / Show Favourites / Beyoncé – Solo Artist / A Day In London / Meet The Fans Backstage / A Conversation With Beyoncé / Crazy In Love Live From The 2004 BRIT Awards / L’Oréal Commercial / Destiny’s Child Update

AUDIO CD: Wishing On A Star / What’s It Gonna Be / My First Time / Krazy In Luv (Maurice’s Nu Soul Mix) / Baby Boy (Junior’s World Mixshow) / Naughty Girl (Calderone Quayle Club Mix)

The Beyoncé Experience Live

Columbia, 2007

Intro / Crazy In Love (Crazy Mix) / Freakum Dress / Green Light / Baby Boy / Beautiful Liar / Naughty Girl / Me, Myself And I / Dangerously In Love / Flaws And All / Destiny’s Child Medley (Cops And Robbers Intro – Independent Women Part I – Bootylicious – No, No, No Part 2 – Bug A Boo – Bills, Bills, Bills – Cater 2 U – Say My Name – Jumpin’, Jumpin’ – Soldier – Survivor) / Speechless / Ring The Alarm / Suga Mama / Upgrade U / 03 Bonnie & Clyde / Check On It / Déjà Vu / Get Me Bodied / Welcome To Hollywood / Deena – Dreamgirls / Listen / Irreplaceable / Beyoncé B’Day Surprise

I Am … Yours: An Intimate Performance At Wynn Las Vegas

Sony Music / Columbia, 2009

ACT ONE: INTIMATE

Hello Introduction / Halo / Irreplaceable / Sweet Dreams Medley / If I Were A Boy / Scared Of Lonely / That’s Why You’re Beautiful / Satellites / Resentment

INTERMISSION

Jazz Medley / Déjà Vu / Tap Sequence

ACT TWO: STORYTELLING

I Wanna Be Where You Are / Destiny’s Child Medley (No, No, No Part 1 – No, No, No Part 2 – Bug A Boo – Bills, Bills, Bills – Say My Name – Jumpin’, Jumpin’ – Independent Women Part I – Bootylicious – Survivor) / Beyoncé (Work It Out – 03 Bonnie & Clyde – Crazy In Love – Naughty Girl – Get Me Bodied) / Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) / Finale

BONUS FEATURE: What Happens In Vegas

5) FILMOGRAPHY

Carmen: A Hip Hopera

MTV, 2001

Director: Robert Townsend

Role: Carmen

Austin Powers In Goldmember

New Line Cinema, 2002

Director: Jay Roach

Role: Foxxy Cleopatra

The Fighting Temptations

Paramount Pictures, 2003

Director: Jonathan Lynn

Role: Lilly

Fade To Black

Paramount Classics, 2004

Director: Patrick Paulson, Michael

John Warren

Role: Herself

The Pink Panther

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2006

Director: Shawn Levy

Role: Xania

Dreamgirls

Paramount Pictures, 2006

Director: Bill Condon

Role: Deena Jones

Cadillac Records

TriStar / Sony Pictures, 2008

Director: Darnell Martin

Role: Etta James

Obsessed

Screen Gems / Sony Pictures, 2009

Director: Steve Shill

Role: Sharon Charles

6) TEN CLASSICS

1) Crazy In Love

2) Get Me Bodied

3) Bills, Bills, Bills

4) Independent Women Part I

5) Work It Out

6) Ring The Alarm

7) Suga Mama

8) Jumpin’, Jumpin’

9) That’s Why You’re Beautiful

10) Say My Name

CHAPTER 1

Imagine…

Beyoncé’s upbringing is a tale of a new American South, a South very different from the one experienced by her parents just 30 years earlier. Beyoncé has only had to work hard to further her career, whereas her parents, father Mathew especially, had to work hard against Southern racism, segregation and colour bars.

Mathew Knowles will loom large in any biography of Beyoncé. A true product of the American South, he saw at first hand segregation and the hatred from whites in a changing, troubled America. In his youth, the country was a cauldron of uncertainty and change, yet outwardly, it was almost impossible to notice. The world image of the country was one of a happy, smiling, white suburbia. In 1945, America had stood victorious. It had successfully fought a war on two fronts and, by ending its period of isolationism, took its place as a hegemonic superpower on the world stage.

Less than five years later, the United States had seen the advance of communism in Eastern Europe and China and the Soviets develop their own atomic weaponry, and faced very real concerns regarding internal security. Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy had sprung up to exploit the prevailing mood of fear and uncertainty with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Yet in black inner cities, concerns were still more primal – concerns about basic rights and, often, where the next meal was coming from, were paramount. For African-Americans, there had been little change; despite their central role in America’s campaign in the Second World War, they were still marginalised and segregated, living in once prosperous areas that had become, simply put, ghettos.

Mathew Knowles, born on January 9, 1951, in Gadsden, Alabama, 65 miles north of Birmingham, was determined to better himself. His father ran a scrap metal business and was a truck driver, while his mother was a maid for a white family who also made quilts for a living. She was a smart woman who had attended Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama at the same time as the young Coretta Scott, who would later marry Martin Luther King.

Alabama was arguably the most racist of all the Southern states, and had seen the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan against the progress of the Civil Rights movement, the bus boycotts and the rise of Alabaman preacher Dr Martin Luther King. Although it was a period of tumult and his family was poor, Mathew’s education was encouraged, and he became one of the first African-American children to go to Litchfield Junior High in Marion, a direct result of the integration resulting from the US Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling, Brown v Board of Education. Because feelings were running so high on the matter, the young Mathew Knowles had to have state troopers escort him to school. It was while he was at school in July 1964 that the Civil Rights Act was passed, which outlawed discrimination based on colour. However, a statute is one thing: it would be a long time before attitudes in the South changed along with the law.

It was via a basketball scholarship that he earned his place at university. Again, Mathew was one of the first African-Americans at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. Knowles turned 18 in 1969, and could not help but be politicised. He marched on demonstrations and participated in sit-ins. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in April and June 1968 and the escalation of the war in Vietnam all played a vivid part in his youth.

While playing basketball at Tennessee, he met and befriended Ronnie Lawson, who invited him to play for his team, the Fisk University Bulldogs. In a year that saw the moon landing, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair and the Black Panther movement at its height, Knowles was influenced by the radicalism of youth but also understood that one of the most powerful political statements would be to study and work hard in order to advance himself.

In the early seventies, Knowles transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, one of America’s leading black universities. It was while at Fisk that he began to think about the possibility of developing musical acts in conjunction with the local radio station, and applying some of the business techniques he was learning to music. This was the era of Motown at its peak, as Berry Gordy began to diversify his record label into film, and successful black artists proved that they could easily match white success. Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield all took control of their careers and their business. However flawed The Beatles’ Apple dream of 1968 – where they made a very public attempt to run their own organisation – may ultimately have been, it created an appetite for young people to think about the business side of music as an attractive career option.

Knowles graduated with degrees in economics and management in 1974. He has always maintained strong links with his alma mater, and, in 2011, he was appointed to the university’s board of trustees. Smart, urbane and capable, Knowles found that sales was a perfect area to showcase both his management and economics skills. After a period in various sales roles, including life insurance and telephone sales, he got a job with Pickering International Medical Supplies, selling medical equipment. By the end of the seventies, he was working for the Xerox Corporation. Based in Rochester, New York, Xerox was the photographic reproduction company which had leapt to world prominence with the introduction of the Xerox 914, the world’s first plain paper photocopier in 1959. Its fortunes were further bolstered by the introduction of the laser printer in 1977. Knowles joined Xerox as a salesman for its medical imaging division, and became very successful in the role, earning by the late eighties, according to several reports, a six-figure salary.

His future wife, Célestine Ann ‘Tina’ Beyincé, was born in Galveston, Texas, on January 4, 1954, the daughter of Lumiz (sometimes spelled Lumis) Beyincé and Agnéz Deréon. Agnéz grew up in Delcambre, Louisiana, and came from mixed parentage – Jewish American, Choctaw Native Indian, African-American and Louisiana Creole. To improve their life, the couple moved to Galveston. Agnéz was a seamstress, while Lumiz was a longshoreman who worked the port in Galveston. He was of Chinese, Indonesian, French and Spanish descent.

“My parents were both Creole from Louisiana,” Tina Knowles told Luxury Las Vegas. “My mother was the youngest of 15 kids. From an early age she was always looking at fashion magazines and could knock off anything she saw. She would create patterns out of newspapers and make the most beautiful dresses and evening clothes. Growing up, we were so poor I wondered how my parents could afford the tuition to send us to Catholic school. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out my mom had bartered her services. She made the altar clothes, the nuns’ habits, and school uniforms while my dad drove the nuns around in exchange for us going to private school. I was glad to find that out because as a kid I was resentful, wondering why they did all that stuff for them.”

Although a talented student, Tina made her name at junior high by singing in the school’s Motown/girl group influenced act, The Beltones (sometimes referred to as The Veltones). It was while in the group that Tina began to design their costumes, while her mother would realise Tina’s designs. Her love of design, and Creole styles and fashions, would remain with Tina forever. Agnéz taught Tina how to make dresses from remnants of fabric and save considerable amounts of money. “Everything I did prepared me for what I ended up doing with Destiny’s Child, which was really a blessing,” she was later to say. Although Galveston was not as incendiary as Alabama, Tina was deeply affected by the changes in American society through the later sixties and seventies. She studied hard and on leaving school, although possessing a flair for hairdressing, got herself a job in a bank.

Although her political activism was not as strong as her future husband’s, a record that strongly influenced Tina’s late teens was Marvin Gaye’s 1971 masterpiece, What’s Going On. “It is one of my favorite albums of all time because in the songs he talks about social changes, the Vietnam War, and the environment being torn apart,” Tina said in 2010. “He talks about God and spirituality. It’s a masterpiece. For the first time, young people started becoming more aware of things that were going on in the world and how they could make a difference rather than just being concerned with looking good and partying. It was a time of sit-ins and racial change.” There was a deep sense that although ostensibly things were improving, in reality, often, they were not. “Things were desegregated but they really weren’t,” Tina continued. “It was such a conscious record. I spent so many hours listening to it. It was like a coming-of-age for me. I still listen to it. There’s one song that’s so honest where he talks about being in so much pain from the drugs. The Vietnam War affected so many people who came back shell-shocked. Their lives were a mess and people didn’t want to talk about it. We still don’t like to talk about it.” Marvin Gaye telegraphed the concerns of a section of America. Tina, then 17, was the record’s core audience. It profoundly affected her.

By the late seventies, Mathew and Tina and their respective families had relocated to the affluent city of Houston, Texas. Houston was founded in 1836 by Augustus and John Allen. Situated on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou waterway, its success was based on the discovery of oil there in the early 20th century. It was this black gold that created a surge in the city’s population. Houston’s place in the world’s consciousness was further cemented in the sixties when space travel focused eyes on the Manned Spacecraft Center (later the Johnson Space Center), the home of NASA’s mission control. The Apollo programme made Houston synonymous with that strange, progressive, expensive interlude in world history.

With its significant Mexican population, unification with African-Americans was not straightforward in the Civil Rights struggle against white supremacy in Houston in the sixties. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, a city that celebrated hard-working and prosperous residents. It was here that Mathew Knowles and Célestine Beyincé met at a party in the late seventies. Mathew had just begun working for Xerox and Tina was employed by a local bank; they met and had a pleasant evening together, but realised that they hadn’t swapped numbers. When they met coincidentally several times during the next day, they thought that possibly fate was intervening. Their relationship started in earnest after a meal at a local restaurant. They were married in 1979. By Christmas 1980, Tina was pregnant with their first child.

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born at the Park Plaza Hospital, Houston, on September 4, 1981, the first child of Mathew and Tina’s union. Beyoncé was named after a derivation of her mother’s family name, Beyincé. Tina was the youngest of seven children and realised that there was only one male child in the family. “I said, oh God, we’ll run out of Beyincés,” she told Rolling Stone in 2004. Beyoncé’s grandfather Lumiz was not overjoyed at the prospect of his granddaughter having a surname for her Christian name. “My family was not happy,” Tina said. “My dad said, ‘She’s gonna be really mad at you because that’s a last name.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s not a last name to anybody but you guys.’” Already Beyoncé had a talking point, a name that had to be spelled out and repeated. It would also see her ridiculed at school.