That’s the definitive word from J. Randy Taraborrelli, the celebrity sleuth who spent countless hours researching the secret life of Queen Bey and finding the unsung heroes behind her fame for his revealing new book Becoming Beyonce.
In an exclusive interview with The Carousel from Los Angeles, the world’s most famous star biographer says until now the special bond between Beyonce and Jay Z has been misunderstood.
“This isn’t a relationship that anyone should take lightly,” insists Randy, whose impressive body of work includes exposés on Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor and the Kennedys, among many others.
“It isn’t one that just happened – they’ve worked on it very hard and it’s not one that they’d abandon very easily. With that knowledge, maybe the public won’t take it so lightly either.”
Randy admits he was more surprised than most when they became a couple, but has now done a complete U-turn since writing the book.
“I think the real telling story that stopped me in my tracks is the one when Beyonce was going through a phase in the relationship when she used to want to please Jay Z like she did with Mathew [her father].
“Jay Z just told her to stop, that was not necessary. What kind of guy says that to a woman? Most guys I know would not be so evolved as to think that wasn’t the best way to go.”
Randy believes one of the reasons they work so well together is that they both can relate to each other’s dysfunctional childhoods.
“They have the same sort of father issues, but in reverse. He had the lack of one and she had maybe too much because hers was also her manager –
and, somehow, or another, this just works for them.
“I think that one of the reasons why there are always so many rumours about Beyonce and Jay Z breaking up is that people don’t understand anything about them at all.”
“Until this book, there was really no history written about them and in that void it’s easy to just create stories.”
One of the most infamous of course is Jay Z’s supposed long-standing affair with Rihanna, further fuelled by the equally notorious incident in the hotel lift at the Met Gala in New York.
Reports allege that when Beyonce’s fiercely protective sister Solange Knowles heard that Jay Z wanted to attend a party that night with Rihanna, she let fly with a barrage of kicks and punches – all caught on the lift’s grainy black and white CCTV footage.
Although Randy’s source in Beyond Beyonce debunks the cheating rumours as merely a PR stunt cooked up to sell concert tickets and records, he believes Jay Z’s long-standing friendship with Rihanna is still a sore point.
“And who knows what men in Beyonce’s life that Jay Z is sensitive about – I think couples just have this. That’s what’s important in my book; I try to find the humanity in these people in a way that the reader can identify with.”
Randy says the book certainly changed his perception about Beyonce, whose career he’s followed closely since interviewing her as a virtual unknown in the early Destiny’s Child days.
“Diana Ross, Madonna, Cher; when you’re around them you feel the power. When you’re around Beyonce, you don’t feel the power. What you feel is a humble, southern girl from Texas who does not appear to be a powerful person.
“But it turns out that’s not the case at all. She’s been wielding power since she was about 11-years-old.
“There’s a great story in my book that I love when her and her father are sitting across the kitchen table eating ice cream trying to determine whether LeToya Luckett [her childhood friend and later Destiny’s Child co-star] needs to be fired or not.”
Although Jay Z’s presence has undoubtedly helped Beyonce cope with the pressures of fame and her long-running disputes with her father over money and his well documented infedility, he believes the arrival of their daughter Blue Ivy in January, 2012, has been her biggest blessing.
“Experiencing motherhood and parenthood has made her realise there is more important things than fame, image and showbiz,” he says.
“In doing that it’s freed her up and made her realise she doesn’t have to be so secretive. Now the important thing is ‘I have to be a good mother’.
“Once you get rid of the secret factor then everything opens up a celebrity. Madonna used to do the same thing; you never saw her kids. Then one day they can’t show you their child enough.
“When that happens, the secrecy suddenly isn’t as important and other things matter more.”
Becoming Beyonce by J Randy Tarraborelli, Macmillan, RRP $29.99.
