Method Man wants to clear the air with some people he screwed over in his past, and Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child are on that list.
When speaking with Math Hoffa in an interview, the rapper reflected on a time in his life when he was miserable. He took it out on people around him, including people at Def Jam Records and Beyoncé.
He talks about taking accountability for an incident that happened 20 years ago.
Apparently, during MTV’s Icon Special for Janet Jackson, a simple “Hello” turned sour when Method Man tried saying “Hi” to the new trio at the time. He detailed meeting with Beyoncé in the group with the original four group members and then a not-so-good encounter with the new group a couple of years later.
“I didn’t like myself, so I didn’t like anybody fucking else,” he began. “So that meant anything that would have come in my circumference at that point in time was gonna get it. My family went through a lot with my ass during that era, man. And I can admit that I did take a lot of my fucking misery out on them, and they did not deserve it. And I took some of my misery out on people at Def Jam that did not fucking deserve it.”
The Wu-Tang Clan member met Destiny’s Child when it was a four-woman show at UK’s MOBO Awards in 1999. He met them when he was with Dame Dash and Jay Z at the time.
He explained, “I had an episode with Beyoncé. And this is me being miserable, okay. I had met them overseas with Jay. We were all over there. Well, I didn’t meet them with Jay. Jay, Dame, all of us were over there. We were doing the MOBO Awards.”
“That’s like their Soul Train [Awards]. And the girls were there – very nice. This is when it was still four of them, the original members. Very nice, very cordial and all that. I always kept that in my head, like these are some decent young ladies and shit.”
Two years later, after an encounter with the girls, he thought they ignored him when he went to say hello and ended up snubbing them by the night’s end.
“Fast forward, now it’s three members. They got the two new girls,” he said. “We were at Janet Jackson’s Icon, and I remember I had just come off stage, and where we were sitting, there were nothing but VIPs. We had NSYNC up here, Destiny’s Child right there, Tommy Lee was over here, [Pamela Anderson].”
He continues, “And I see the girls, so I kinda moseyed out of my seat to go over and say ‘What’s up to them. Now, this is still me in my low self-esteem era. But I’m thinking like, comfort zone here. I’m gonna say, ‘What’s up to the girls. I love them. I’m just gonna say ‘Hi.’ I go over to say ‘Hi’ to them, and when I said ‘Hi,’ they didn’t even turn around and acknowledge me.”
Method Man adds, “Now, my ass, in my head, with my low self-esteem is like, ‘They just shitted on me.’ When in fact, they didn’t even hear me. It was so loud in that muthafucka. That’s the excuse that I’m giving right now – they didn’t even fucking hear me. Afterward, Rockwilder, he was gonna do the ‘Bootylicious’ song for them. He comes over, he’s talking to them, he’s like, ‘Oh, you know Red and Meth?’ And they put their hands out to shake, and I kept my hand here and was like, ‘Go ‘head with that Hollywood shit.”
The “Power Book II: Ghost” actor says he still feels terrible about the interaction 20 years later.
“To this day, that shit hurt my heart because neither Kelly, Beyoncé or Michelle ever did any-fucking-thing to me,” he admitted. “But me being so miserable and in that fucking moment, I felt like they wasn’t treating me the way I should have been treated. Who am I to think that about these girls? They’re here to promote themselves and break records and things of that nature. And it was not about me, it was about Janet-fucking-Jackson. And to this day, man, I don’t think I’ve ever apologized for that.”
He then concluded by apologizing to Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle.