Exploring the Mathew Knowles Redemption Tour of 2016
LatestOn Sunday night, while collecting an award on behalf of her daughter—a young upstart named Beyoncé—at the BET Awards, Tina Knowles thanked her ex-husband Mathew Knowles. “I also want to thank her father, who taught her the business of music,” she said.
Ms. Tina’s speech capped off what as seemed from the outside to be a victory lap for Mathew after years of little to no acknowledgment from Tina and their daughters.
Mathew Knowles famously quit a high-paying job at Xerox to focus on his 11-year-old daughter’s music career. In interviews over the years, Beyoncé has recalled her father’s Joe Jackson-esque training methods, like making her run on a treadmill for an hour while singing to build her stamina. But you can’t deny that Mathew’s tactics were effective. He went on to manage Destiny’s Child as they became one of the most successful girl groups of all time.
Mathew managed Beyoncé’s solo career until March 2011, when she fired him in the midst of reports that he had stolen money from her. Later that year, Mathew and Tina Knowles ended their 31 year marriage following a separation in 2009 when news broke that Mathew had fathered a child with another woman.
Up until that point, Mathew was, by all accounts, a tough but adored father and husband. Destiny’s Child was a family affair, with Tina designing costumes for the group, Solange performing as a backup dancer and Mathew at the helm. He was the assumed subject of a saccharine love song off of Beyonce’s debut solo album. On “Daddy,” Beyoncé sings, “I want my unborn son to be like my daddy/I want my husband to be like my daddy/ There is no one else like my daddy/ And I thank you for loving me.”
This all made his fall from grace even more swift and jarring. For years it seemed to those on the outside that Mathew had effectively been excommunicated from the family. You frequently saw Beyoncé and Solange out with their mother, but never (at least publicly) with their father. Both Beyoncé and Solange have openly gushed about Tina and her strength, perhaps signaling whose side they had chosen in the fallout.Further complicating things, Mathew spent years trying to again profit off his daughter’s name by shopping a Destiny’s Child biopic and selling her old tour merchandise.
In 2012, gossip sites reported that after a long estrangement, Beyoncé allowed Mathew in the delivery room for the birth of her daughter Blue Ivy. Still, Mathew wasn’t spotted at Solange’s 2014 wedding in New Orleans, continuing the narrative that he hadn’t yet been forgiven by his family. When Mathew remarried in 2013, neither Beyoncé or Solange attended the ceremony.
But finally, this year, Mathew Knowles seems to have publicly rejoined the family unit—beginning with an appearance on Beyoncé masterpiece Lemonade, which notably tackles the subject of infidelity.