Beyoncé’s childhood best friend and Destiny’s Child bandmate have finally met in person – 23 years after a bitter falling out.
LaTavia Roberson told the Daily Mail it felt like ‘justice for my soul’ when she reconciled with the Cowboy Carter singer after a recent concert in Houston, Texas.
In an exclusive interview, mother-of-two LaTavia, 43, said: ‘It was amazing because we had not been in the same room for years.
‘We prayed together and the hugs and the energy we shared were very real. At one point Beyoncé put her head in my lap and said, ‘LaTavia, I’m so tired’.
‘She was very exhausted from being up on stage and I was like, ‘Girl, how do you do this every night?’ But I could feel so much love in that room and every embrace was real.
LaTavia and mom-of-two Beyoncé formed what seemed like an unbreakable bond when they both auditioned to join a girl group in Houston in 1990.
Beyoncé’s former best friend and Destiny’s Child bandmate LaTavia Roberson says they have reconciled 23 years after a bitter falling out
The four original members of Destiny’s Child were (from left) Kelly Rowland, Beyonce, LaToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson
Along with singers Kelly Rowland and LeToya Luckett they went on to form Girl’s Tyme, managed by Beyoncé’s dad.
Mathew Knowles resigned from his job as a medical equipment salesman to prepare them for stardom with grueling boot camps at his house.
The foursome signed with Columbia Records in 1997, by which point they had changed their name to Destiny’s Child.
‘Beyonce was my best friend for 10 years and she was someone I knew I could talk to and who I shared everything with,’ said Roberson.
‘We shared a lot as teenagers growing up and there was a point where I felt I would never see her again, so this was justice for my soul.
‘We were kindred spirits and I miss her so much, not because she’s Beyoncé, but because she’s the same Beyoncé Giselle Knowles I first met when we auditioned for the band.’
The band had several name changes, calling themselves The Dolls in 1993. Cliché and Destiny were two other names they used
The foursome signed with Columbia Records in 1997, by which point they had changed their name to Destiny’s Child
Roberson said she and Beyonce, 43, still have a lot in common. ‘Outside of the fact we have very different lives, we are both mothers and have grown up and matured.
‘Beyoncé and I still have a very special connection,’ she added. ‘I was really grateful that we got to cherish that moment.
‘When I was leaving, her husband Jay Z hugged me and said, ‘You know she loves you very much, right?’ I replied: ‘I love her as well and I always will’.’
Destiny’s Child toured with TLC, one of the biggest girl bands of the 1990s, and their second album The Writing’s On the Wall reached number two in the R&B charts in the US.
The title proved prophetic, however, as LeToya and LaTavia were forced out in 2000 after falling out with manager Knowles, to be replaced by singers Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin.
Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles wrote about the fallout in her new memoir Matriarch, released last month, explaining: ‘Beyoncé saw it as the end of a marriage of 10 years, and she began to grieve it as such. ‘A depression fell on our house,’ Tina wrote.
LaTavia – who along with LeToya sued both Knowles and the band before settling in 2002 – today hits back at suggestions she quit of her own free will.
‘Who in their right mind would leave Destiny’s Child?’ she asked.
‘We were one of the hottest and most successful female groups out there. I got kicked out of the group. I never left.
Beyoncé is currently starring in her Cowboy Carter Tour, where she performed in Los Angeles this month
LeToya and LaTavia were forced out in 2000, and replaced by Michelle Williams (right) and Farrah Franklin (left)
Franklin left soon after joining and the group spent the rest of its existence as a threesome of Michelle Williams, Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Rowland
‘I was 16 and my only job was to rehearse and get up on stage but we heard things and we knew we were all underpaid.
‘How were we on tour with TLC and making just $1,000 a week doing five or six shows a week?
‘Also, Beyoncé would speak her mind to her father, while we couldn’t say nothing. At the end of the day, that was her dad. It sucked to a certain extent, but I supported her in everything she said.
‘And I’ve maintained my truth. My issue was always with management, it was never with the girls.’
In her new book, Tina Knowles accuses her ex-husband of repeatedly cheating on her during their 30-year marriage, claiming his infidelity started when Beyoncé was a small child.
Tina and Knowles divorced in 2011 after she discovered he had fathered a child out of wedlock with businesswoman Alexsandra Wright.
Mother-of-two Tina revealed in her memoir she took him back in secret – concealing the ‘affair’ from her disapproving daughters – before finally leaving him for good.
The cover of Destiny’s Child’s second single With Me showed the four members of the band. From left, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, Beyonce and LeToya Luckett
The original four members, Kelly, LeToya, LeTavia and Beyonce were pictured at Sony records in the late 1990s
LaTavia, whose mother Cheryl Mitchell acted as a chaperone for the girl band, feels ready to talk about that period of their lives.
‘Miss Tina was like a second mother to me and I’m so happy for her to find this peace,’ she said.
‘She ran a hair salon back then and she showed me how to be a strong, black woman.
‘But I could always tell that something was going on. My ear was always listening and my mother and Miss Tina spoke about a lot, so I heard things.
‘It wasn’t my place to speak about it as a child, although I always had a deep compassion for what Mamma Tina was enduring.
‘I would hear things like, ‘Why was this woman answering the phone, Mathew?’
LaTavia said it put her mother in a difficult situation and her job as chaperone could have been on the line.
‘There were times we were at a gig and Mr Knowles was nowhere around and we were due to be on stage,’ she said.
LaTavia (third from right) said Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles (far left) ‘was like a second mother’ to her
Beyoncé (left) and LaTavia during the early days of the group
Along with singers Kelly Rowland and LeToya Luckett they went on to form Girl’s Tyme, managed by Beyoncé’s dad
‘I think it did affect his daughters and I know she saw a lot more because she was in that household.
‘We were kids so we didn’t talk about infidelity. I can only imagine the things that Beyonce and Solange saw and endured during their parent’s marriage.’
LaTavia admits the loneliness that resulted from leaving Destiny’s Child led to an alcohol problem and a DUI before she got her life back on track with the birth of her first child in 2013.
Now a fulltime mother living in Kennesaw, Georgia, she agreed to have dinner with Knowles on the same night she met Beyoncé backstage during her September 2023 concert at the NRG Stadium in Houston.
The former best friends posed for photos with Destiny’s Child members Kelly and Michelle, as well as LeToya. It was the first time they had all been in a room together for almost two decades.
But she revealed that a separate attempt to bury the hatchet with Mathew Knowles did not end so well.
LaTavia said the meeting was organized by Beyoncé, but then the singer’s father asked her and LeToya to have dinner with him afterwards, saying he wanted to give them a plaque.
‘I agreed out of a place of love having seen him as a father figure when I was a child and it was great at first – but then he started being Mathew,’ she said.
‘I tried to speak about certain things and he tried to deflect. My confidence ended up getting shut down.’
LaTavia is now a fulltime mother living in Kennesaw, Georgia
LaTavia claimed he ‘made some interesting comments’ about her mother, who is a breast cancer survivor.
‘At that point I was like, ‘I’m done because my mother was the one who held your fort down while you were out doing what you did to Miss Tina’,’ she said.
‘When LeToya said, ‘We looked at you as a father figure’, he replied, ‘I never tried to be a father figure to you’.
‘I said, ‘So why am I here? You are a pompous son of a b***h. I am not a little girl you can control, I am leaving’.
‘LeToya said, ‘El, stay’ and I said, ‘I’m not sitting down to endure this’. ‘I walked out and he said, ‘Are you at least not going to open my gift?’
‘But I didn’t go there for a plaque and Mathew needs to know you can’t screw over people and expect things not to happen because karma is a b***h, it really is.’
