Believe it or not, Kelly Rowland knows how big of a star Beyoncé is and she knows that they used to be in a group together. Yet, it’s been 16 years since Destiny’s Child broke up and she still has to deal with questions about Bey.
Can you imagine how often Beyoncé is asked about having worked with Kelly Rowland as part of one of the most successful girl groups of all time? We suspect there’s a pretty big disparity in those numbers.
Rowland admitted over the years, and again here, that she used to be bothered by comparisons to her former bandmate and let that talk get into her mind when she was younger, but she’s come a long way on her own path and learned to recognize her own power.
And at this point in her life, she’s clearly had just about enough of diminishing questions about her career and legacy alongside Beyoncé.
During an appearance on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning,” co-host Peter Rosenberg started talking to her about ego in the entertainment industry.
“Everyone who gets in the entertainment business gets into it to be ‘the man,'” he said, suggesting that it takes “an ego check” sometimes to work alongside certain stars, “and you happen to be standing next to the brightest light on planet Earth.”
Rowland shut him down almost immediately, using his own imagery to do so, replying, “Here’s the thing, light attracts light. I am light. I am a beautiful, brown, shining light. So I don’t think anybody’s light dims anyone else’s.”
“I think that when other people start to compare you, I think that’s when it shows how dim they are of themselves,” she added. “So I don’t take somebody else trying to dim my light anymore for anybody else.”
Rosenberg didn’t seem to pick up on the tone of her response, as he doubled down arguing that she could have rested on her laurels having been part of Destiny’s Child and her “best friend’s the biggest star in the world.”
“Yes and her best friend/big sister is one of the biggest stars in the world, too,” Rowland shot right back. She took issue with this tendency that some have to compare people — and especially women — even attributing it to the “patriarchy.”
“It’s always been, like, patriarchy to me, or even now, like, everybody’s actually [starting] to believe this thing where, well only one woman can do this and they shine the biggest,” Rowland argued.
She went on to praise Beyoncé for knocking down doors and making positions for women of color in the industry, “but also, somebody did that for her.”
She went on to explain, “Another group has done that for us, and I do it for other brown girls, so it’s just a cycle and a space for all of us to open up doors for each other instead of compare.”
“Don’t be so limited,” she pushed back against that narrative to Rosenberg. “I feel like people who compare are limited in their minds. And they limit themselves, so don’t do that to other people.”
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