Given that Beyonce Knowles-Carter both had two musical partners in Destiny’s Child—Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams—before she went out on her own as a solo act, and a younger sister, Solange Knowles, who is also a musician, it’s fascinating to hear Rowland sing about the difficulties of living in Knowles-Carter’s orbit in “Dirty Laundry.” What makes the song particularly interesting though is the way it chronicles the ups and downs of Rowland’s relationship with Knowles-Carter as it tracks with what Rowland says was an abusive relationship with an unnamed man, during which Knowles-Carter’s fame and success were both causes for resentment, a lifeline for Rowland, and something her ex-boyfriend invoked as part of his efforts to isolate her and dominate her affections. “He hittin the window like it was me, until it shattered / He pulled me out, he said, “Don’t nobody love you but me / Not your mama, not your daddy and especially not Bey” / He turned me against my sister,” Rowland sings on the track, in which she also describes feeling some relief that Knowles-Carter’s fame eclipsed hers, and describes a call from Knowles-Carter that encouraged her to leave the man who was abusing her:

Given Knowles-Carter’s obsessive curation of her own image, “Dirty Laundry” may be the most genuinely revealing look at her behavior and artistic circle in years. It certainly tells us more about Knowles-Carter than Beyonce: Life Is But A Dream, the documentary she co-directed and for which she provided much of the archival footage, that aired on HBO earlier this spring. Knowing that Knowles-Carter remains personally close to at least one member of Destiny’s Child cuts through the tabloid rumors about feuds and reunions. And knowing that Rowland survived an abusive relationship lends context to her efforts to establish herself as an artist independent of both the musical legacy of Destiny’s Child and Knowles-Carter’s considerable shadow.

In an age of hyper-produced pop stars, and given the myth that trauma creates great art, it’s easy to forget how artistic confidence and personal stability can be related. Knowles-Carter fired her father Matthew as her manager, and appears to have had a falling-out with him, but she’s also in a long-term, stable relationship with a partner, Jay-Z, who appears supportive of her career and her family. Solange Knowles, who’s found professional success by hopping genres so she isn’t in competition with her sister, finding a musical style that matches her vocal capabilities and her strengths as a small-club performer, married and had her first child at 17, moved to Idaho with her husband, and divorced shortly thereafter. Rowland, who for a time split her efforts pursuing a career in acting while continuing to make music, also appears to have had personal difficulties that weren’t widely known until now. Or, as she puts it on “Dirty Laundry,” “I swear y’all don’t know the half of this industry.”

Reading and writing about Chris Brown, the undeniably talented singer who in 2009 become notorious for battering his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, has been, for the last four years, a depressing experience. Whether Brown’s been tossing chairs out of television studio windows, screaming at parking lot attendants, getting a tattoo of either a battered woman or a Dia De Los Muertos figure—who at the end of the day, is still a dead woman—on his neck, or reuniting with Rihanna, he’s been a figure of profound discomfort. Whether his behavior is the response to living through the domestic abuse his mother experienced when he was a teenager, a symptom of more wide-spread issues with anger and self-control, or a result of enormous entitlement, it’s awful to watch anyone behave so self-destructively, and do so much damage to other people in public. And whether Brown has been more of a target, or whether he’s been afforded more or fewer excuses for his behavior and chances to continue working than a white celebrity with a record of violence against women like Charlie Sheen, there’s no denying that his continued presence on Emmy stages and morning talk shows is a vertiginous exercise in trying to parse how much a liability the industry thinks domestic violence and a record of fights are, and how much the market believes that Brown is repentant or that his reunion with Rihanna has absolved him.

The latest intersection of Brown’s character rehabilitation and his need to keep selling records came yesterday morning when he appeared on the Today show to promote his latest single, “Fine China.” In response to questioning from Matt Lauer, about how he’s changed, Brown said that “Most importantly, you know, knowing that what I did was totally wrong, and having to kind of deal with myself and forgive myself in the same breath, and being able to apologize to Rihanna, and being able to be that man that can be a man, you know?” I don’t really know what that means, or what it means for an overall view of gender relations for someone to believe that battering an intimate partner is wrong, but that, as Brown recently said at a comedy club “You gotta say that one thing to her… don’t make me have to tell you again, that’s my p—y, baby! so you better not give it away!…So every person in this motherf–king building, if you got a bad b—h you better say that s–t to her, or she might f–k another n—a.”

But this juxtaposition, and the strange spectacle of people going on talk shows to tout their self-improvement in service of record sales, got me thinking about what it is that we want from celebrities who do terrible things but to continue to want our dollars as consumers. Do we want them to apologize to the people they’ve harmed directly, and to promise to do it never again? Brown seems to have that box checked with Rihanna, but the reaction to their reunion has illustrated how little most people know about how frequently survivors of domestic violence return to the people who abused them. And the fact that he’s reconciled with Rihanna doesn’t seem to have stopped Brown to getting into confrontations that sometimes turn violent with everyone from fellow singers like Frank Ocean to service workers like a parking attendant he unloaded on recently. That disjunct raises interesting questions about why we treat some forms of violence by wealthy and famous men as inexcusable and as a sign that they’re deeply troubled, while others get treated like they’re routine, even when they seem like contributing evidence that someone has a pattern of behavior that’s broadly troubling. Maybe it’s condescending, but I’d like to see Chris Brown stop getting into situations that get violent for his sake, for the sake of the people he gets angry at, and for what he could contribute to the larger conversation if he got religion on a deeper level than the need to retain the ability to sell records.
Read more