Beyonce and Kelly Rolland ‘sexually harassed’ as teenagers by Jegged Edge




US group Destiny's Child, from L to R, Michelle Williams, Beyonce Knowles and Kelly Rowland perform before the start of the NBA All-Star game 20 February 2005 in Denver. AFP PHOTO/Don EMMERT
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Beyonce’s father Mathew Knowles has claimed his daughter and her bandmate Kelly Rowland were sexually harassed as teenagers.

The music manager, 67, said in a chat with Vlad TV on Tuesday that two members of the Atlanta-based R&B group Jagged Edge behaved inappropriately with the pair when they were 16.

The incident took place when Jagged Edge and Destiny’s Child were touring together, and on the same bus, in the late Nineties, according to Knowles.

“Now, remember the girls are minors: They’re 16-years-old, the guys are 21 and 22-years-old,” said Knowles, who appeared on the show to promote his new book, Destiny’s Child: The Untold Story. 

“I got a call from Kelly and Beyoncé . . . saying that they were constantly being harassed by two of the members in Jagged Edge,” he said. “I couldn’t have that. I literally had to put the guys off the bus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”

Mathew said he acted swiftly with business and the law in mind, saying, ‘I have a fiduciary duty with minors, by the law, there’s a certain way I have to manage that.’

When he was asked how he processed the information as a father, Mathew said, “We won’t talk about that on camera.”

Knowles did not specify which members of Jagged Edge he was talking about.

He said the incident “began all of this drama” that involved one-time Destiny’s Child members LaTavia Roberson and LaToya Luckett getting new reps. The pair left the group in 2000. 

Knowles revealed: “An attorney called me out-of-the-blue to tell me that I would be getting a certified letter . . . to tell me that, at this point, that he was now on an interim basis managing LaTavia and LaToya. 

“And that they would finally go and search for a final manager, but for now he was the interim manager.”

He said he told the attorney that Roberson and Luckett were responsible for about five percent of the vocals — Beyonce and Rowland did the other 95 percent — and ultimately, the ladies were gone from the group. DailyMail.com has reached out to Beyonce, Rowland and Jagged Edge for comment. 

Knowles earlier this year said he passed on using R Kelly for a 1998 collaboration with Destiny’s Child due to both business differences with the singer — and his reputation. 

He told Metro.co.uk in January — amid the initial discussion brought about by the the Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly — that when he and the group met with the singer, the girls were around 15 or 16-years-old.

“I was there, and my former wife Tina was there,” the music manager said. “When they went to the bathroom, Tina would go with them. They did not leave our eyes.”

Knowles told the outlet in detail about the environment in which R Kelly immersed himself as he worked. 

“The thing with R Kelly was, he liked to record late at night, around midnight,” he said. “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.”

Knowles said he passed on a collaboration between a then-established R Kelly — who had hits such as to his name by then such as 1993’s Bump N’ Grind and 1996’s I Believe I Can Fly — and his up-and-coming group due to both business and creative differences.

“I personally rejected the song, because I didn’t think it was a good song,” he said of the track, which would have been on the group’s self-titled debut album, which featured Beyonce, Kelly Rowland and then-members Roberson and Luckett. 

“Not just because of (his) reputation — this was around 1998, we had just begun to hear some of those things.”

Knowles said, “R Kelly wasn’t cheap to collaborate with, as ‘it was $75,000, plus travel costs, so we’re talking $100 000 for a song,” adding that he “was managed by Sony . . . and (the label) would almost force you to record with (their) artistes.”