Kelly Rowland hasn't let her 'death' or rifts with former Destiny's Child bandmates spoil her new album, she tells Angus Batey
If you think that life as an alumnus of one of the biggest-selling pop groups of all time must be all fun and games, some time in the company of Kelly Rowland may help to change your mind. The singer, a former member of Destiny's Child, is used to people taking the odd pot-shot. But some things go beyond the pale.
"I've heard everything these past few weeks," she chuckles with bemused resignation. "From Beyoncé bein' engaged, to my mom and Mathew [ Knowles, Beyoncé's dad and Destiny's Child's manager] having this rendezvous and making me, to me being pregnant, to me being dead . . . " It's bad enough when people are suggesting you're manipulative or cold - as some did of Rowland and Beyoncé when the group abruptly shed two members, amid legal acrimony, just as they were becoming one of the biggest brands in urban pop - and pretty difficult when rumour- mongers insist that your closeness to your manager is because he's secretly your dad, or that he's your uncle, or that he and his wife have become your legal guardians (all of which have been alleged, and none of which is true).
But being pronounced dead is no laughing matter.
"I had been in Singapore, and was on an 18-hour flight home, so none of my family could get in contact with me," she recalls of the moment when exaggerated rumours of her demise became all the rage last November. "All they know is that it's all over the radio airwaves that I'm dead, that I was in a car accident in Singapore. And I was like, 'That's so not funny': one, to play with life like that, and two, to play with my family's emotions. So, that was the worst. But people make up crazy stuff because they want something to say. And we," she says, referring to the extended Destiny's Child clan, "don't have nothin' to talk about".
It seems one of the more bizarre demands that celebrity places on those it envelops that their lives must assume a status somewhere beyond reality. Whether Destiny's Child had presented themselves as down-home girls next door, or bionic sex kittens from outer space on a mission to conquer Earth (and there were times during the group's career, which included selling 70 million albums, when they appeared to be doing both simultaneously), what the audience sees is rarely enough. Conspiracy theories have always fed the popular imagination, but it seems we are no longer happy just to muse over UFOs and assassination plots: we want to believe that our pop stars have dark secrets and hidden motivations.
So when Rowland sits down in a London hotel to talk about her second solo album, Ms Kelly, she knows that it won't be long before conversation turns to those moments of controversy and confusion - the bumps in what seems a remarkably smooth road from childhood ambition to global superstardom. And while her assertion that the Destiny's Child set-up has "nothin' to talk about" is a bit wide of the mark, what ensues is not a series of media-trained banalities, but a conversation that feels rather more substantial - perhaps even real. Like the singers she idolised as a child, Rowland is finding that baring your soul for a living can be a painful experience.
KELENDRIA ROWLAND WAS born in Atlanta in 1981, moving to Houston with her mother when she was eight. At school, she met LaTavia Roberson and, through her, Beyoncé Knowles. Roberson and Knowles were members of a girl group - for which, before her teens, Rowland had auditioned successfully. Inspired by the likes of TLC and SWV, they tried out group names redolent of the fresh-faced pop-R&B styles of the day - Girls Tyme; Somethin' Fresh; Cliche. Settling on the name Destiny's Child, and with a line-up of Knowles, Roberson, Rowland and LeToya Luckett, they spent years rehearsing at Knowles's home, putting in the hours between homework and bedtime. By 1997, with Mathew having given up a well-paid job with Xerox to manage them, the group got their big break, signing with the Columbia label. Their first single, No, No, No sold more than a million copies, turning the girls into "overnight" stars.
The problems began after the second album, the portentously titled The Writing's on the Wall, was released in 1999. Luckett and Roberson issued a lawsuit, alleging that Mathew Knowles was taking too great a slice of the group's income and chafing at what they saw as his overbearing control. They named Mathew, Beyoncé and Kelly as respondents. They may not have intended to split up the group, but that was the result. The video for Say My Name, the album's third single, featured two new members miming Roberson's and Luckett's parts, much to their - and the group's fans' - surprise.
THE SUIT AGAINST Beyoncé and Kelly was eventually dropped, though conditions were placed on both sides preventing them from discussing their former bandmates in negative terms.
"I can't say too much," Rowland apologises. "I don't know how to say it without . . . sayin' it!" she laughs. "But fingers were pointed, and, er, facts were not stated." Rowland's usually sunny demeanour darkens. Earlier in our interview she has carefully but politely referred to Roberson and Luckett not by name, but as "the former members" or "the ladies".
"It was really unfair, when I think about the whole situation, just because the ladies didn't talk to me, nor Beyoncé, about how they were feelin'," she says, carefully but with evident emotion. "We were just served these papers. And it was the worst feeling, because you think about growing up with these ladies for your whole life, pretty much, and you lose your best fri- . . . ". She chokes a little, and tears start to well up. She apologises. "I remember how that hurt so bad, because we loved them." She is surprised by the strength of her feelings: clearly that love still exists.
"Yeah, definitely," she says, dabbing her eyes carefully with a manicured finger. "And care for them, genuinely. And now, to see LeToya doin' her thing with her career [ Luckett released her debut solo album to considerable success last year], I'm so proud of her. And I think LaTavia's a writer now, and to see her like that is just amazing. So I think you realise that life has to happen, and you have to move on. But that was painful."
Perhaps surprisingly, Rowland is able to talk about the end of her relationship with Dallas Cowboys football player Roy Williams without as much evident angst. The couple were engaged, and Rowland appeared on the cover of an American bridal magazine discussing plans for their wedding. But the March 2005 ceremony was cancelled at relatively short notice.
"With the engagement, I feel like I wasn't ready, to be honest," she shrugs. "This is the first time I've ever said this, but I felt like I wasn't healed from my other relationships. From the relationship before him."
The album that has become Ms Kelly was begun in the wake of the end of the engagement, and due for release last summer, but Rowland felt the emotions she was going through were making it a depressing listen.
"It was more serious," she recalls of the now largely scrapped version, "all, 'This is what I've been through' and 'my heartache'. But," she says, switching into an admonitory tone, "I'm like, 'Kelly! Life is not just about heartache. You have good times and you should talk about those as well.' So that's what I did." She describes the second album she's released under her own name as the first she feels represents her as an artist.
Enlivened by uptempo tracks recorded near her Miami home after nights out clubbing with A-list hip-hop producer Scott Storch, Ms Kelly rights the wrong Rowland perceived in her first solo album, Simply Deep, and contains the "missing elements - the fun, playful elements" that make up her character. But the shadow cast by her relationship looms large.
"I think I'd have made people cry with the first draft of the record," she says with a chuckle. "But with this one, they'll feel everything. To me, it feels like the healing process of a break-up. The first half is, 'Okay, I broke up, but I'm just fine, and I'm gonna go out here and show the world.' Then you go through the sadness, and the anger, and then you let it go and know that it's okay just by yourself. I think that when bad things happen to us, you kinda dwell on it. And I never wanted - never want - to be bitter."
Ms Kelly is released on RCA on June 25