Journalist and author Janet Mock has launched a new podcast called Never Before and her first guest was none other than Tina Lawson, Instagram auteur and mother to Beyoncé and Solange.
During their in-depth discussion, Ms. Tina talked about the early days of Destiny's Child as the group started to gain national recognition. "In the early days, one of the other parents, LaTavia's mom Cheryl, and I would travel with them all the time," she said. "She was the chaperone and I was the whatever else. We were like oh no, girls, you can't carry your luggage because ya'll are stars ... And then later on when people started fawning over them and acting like they couldn't pick up anything, we were like oh they can pick that up, they can carry it. Because we didn't want them to be so, so spoiled. And they would always say, well, you told us that we didn't have to carry our luggage and now we got someone to carry it, and you want us to carry it. But you want to keep them grounded and not become these big divas."
She also responded to critics of Beyoncé's hairstyle choices: "Hair color is just an expression of something different that you want to have, or something creative. I’ve read some things where people are like, 'Beyoncé wants to be white' because she has blonde highlights in her hair, but it’s ridiculous. You know she is who she is and she’s a very proud black woman. I know people with natural hair that are the least black inside, you know, it doesn’t matter."
Listen to the first episode of Janet Mock's Never Before podcast with Tina Lawson here via Megaphone and stream the coversation on iTunes and Spotify.