The former manager of Destiny’s Child, Mathew Knowles, says that the rumors centered around R. Kelly were one of the factors to why Destiny’s Child never worked with the 52-year-old R&B singer. In a statement to Metro, Knowles said that he and his then-wife Tina Knowles never let the girls out of their eyesight.
“The girls were 15, 16. When they went to the bathroom, Tina would go with them. They did not leave our eyes.” The father of Beyonce and Solange also said R. Kelly had an irregular recording process.
“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.”
Another reason Destiny’s Child never recorded with R. Kelly was simply that Knowles did not like the 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.”
