‘They did not leave our eyes’: Beyonce’s dad spills on girl group’s meeting with R Kelly

Beyonce’s father Mathew Knowles has revealed the extreme lengths that were taken to protect Destiny’s Child when the teenage girl group worked with R Kelly in the late 1990s.

Knowles, who managed Beyonce until 2011, told Metro that Destiny’s Child ultimately turned down the chance to record a song with Kelly for their debut album, 1999’s The Writing’s On The Wall.

While admitting he had heard rumours about Kelly’s behaviour with young girls when Destiny’s Child met with the rapper, Knowles said it had been a combination of factors that lead to the girl group not working with him.

“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,” he said.

Knowles recalled how members Beyonce, Kelly Rowland, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson had worked with Kelly in a recording studio next to “a club, with 40 or 50 people dancing”.

“The girls were 15, 16. When they went to the bathroom, Tina (Knowles, Beyonce’s mother) would go with them. They did not leave our eyes,” Knowles said.

Destiny’s Child did eventually record a song written by Kelly, 1999’s Stimulate Me, but a source told Metro the rapper was not in the room with the girls when the song was recorded.

The song also only appeared on the soundtrack for Eddie Murphy’s film Life as “Mathew

didn’t want it on any official Destiny’s Child albums”.

This week US police launched a new investigation into Kelly after scores of allegations were made against the rapper in a new TV documentary series.

In Surviving R Kelly , numerous women allege they were sexually abused, coerced into threesomes, held prisoner, impregnated and beaten for looking at other men — claims which Kelly has denied.

Many of the singer’s former collaborators have come forward to denounce the rapper, including Lady Gaga, who worked with Kelly on 2013 single Do What U Want.

Gaga released a statement on Twitter revealing she would be pulling the song from circulation and she stands “behind these women 1000 per cent”.