Mathew Knowles established “boundaries” and created a “stable environment” to protect Beyonce after she shot to fame as a teenager.
Mathew Knowles says he protected Beyonce when she was at the start of her career
Knowles managed his daughter’s girl group Destiny’s Child and helped her navigate her solo career before stepping down as her manager in 2011 – and he feels proud to have “built the roadmap” for his daughter’s enormous success.
However, he is adamant it was not easy for Beyonce to have become so famous at such a young age – scoring her first number one single in the US with Destiny’s Child’s ‘No, No, No’ when she was 16 – and he did all he could to keep her life “stable”. He told The Sunday Times newspaper: “It’s about how you deal with it. It can be difficult when you’re young and all of a sudden you have millions of dollars and everybody loves you.
“We had all sorts of boundaries … Having a stable environment around you becomes important with fame.”
Reflecting on his work with Beyonce over the years, Knowles admits there are plenty of things he would have done differently with hindsight.
He explained: “There’s a lot of things that I would do differently, I would have suggested different songs, made differences in some of the tours that we did … We’ll leave it at that.”
Despite severing their professional partnership years ago, Mathew believes he is still the world’s best music manager and feels proud of all his achievements working with the pop superstar during her rise to the top of the music industry.
Mathew said: “I’m very grateful to have been the best manager in the history of music. I don’t get that compliment enough …
“After 21 years of managing Beyonce, I smile because even now music magazines talk about her top 20 songs, 70 per cent of which are from her first four albums, which are the ones I was a part of.
“To know that I was a part of that, that I … let her understand the importance of brand development, and that 30-40 per cent of her team are people I hired 30 years ago … It makes me feel proud and grateful that I built the road map for Beyonce’s success. That makes me feel good.”
