Long before Beyonce Knowles married former drug dealer Jay Z, she was secretly raised by people caught up in a web of narcotics, kinky sex, and even child abuse, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.
As the bombshell biography Becoming Beyonce, by J. Randy Taraborrelli, continues to make headlines, Beyonce’s former “babysitter” — and convicted drug dealer — Belfrey Brown spoke exclusively to Radar about the dark years before her international fame.
Beyonce began her career in Texas, where she was part of the group Girl’s Tyme, mentored by manager Andretta Tillman. Tillman’s nephew, Brown, helped raise and mentor Beyonce, in between his illegal activities.
Brown told Radar that from 1989 onward, “I was around [Beyoncé] a lot.”
“Andretta Tillman’s my aunt. She was the original manager for Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé,” he added. “I did spend a lot of time around them in the early years. I guess you could say I was Beyoncé’s babysitter!”
He confessed to Radar, “At the time, I was selling drugs. I did get caught up in a federal indictment and I had to leave them all behind to go to prison near Dallas. I was there for 12 years.”
Sadly, the dark demons of addiction were running wild in young Beyonce’s own home. According to another family friend, her own father was a cocaine-snorting serial cheater in those early years.
The Making of a Child of Destiny, a memoir by Knowles family friend Brian Moore, claimed Beyoncé’s dad, Mathew Knowles, could barely hide his rampant drug use
Mathew was known to go in Tillman “garage to do cocaine or other drugs” during rehearsals for Beyonce’s group, Moore claimed. He “would come back ranting and raving … yelling and carrying on,” and would attend important meetings about her future career “high as a kite.”
Cocaine was only one of his vices. An admitted sex addict, Mathew often cheated on wife Tina, the book said. According to the new blockbuster biography, Becoming Beyonce, desperate Tina even once turned to drug dealing brown for help. Moore claims Tillman confronted Brown, and asked him if he was supplying Knowles with drugs, a claim he denied.
But even as those around Knowles began to notice his frequent drug-induced rages, he only “increased … his drug use,” Moore wrote. “It was getting out of control. He started lying even more to Tina and giving her the impression that there were meetings going on … Mathew used them as a cover for extramarital affairs with different women.”

And Tina would not take it. Brown told Radar that tensions between Tina and Mathew Knowles often boiled over into explosive fights. “Have you seen the show ‘Empire’?” he joked. “That whole thing between them was like ‘Empire’ before the TV show!” He eventually went to rehab for sex addiction and the couple’s divorce was finalized in 2011.
Meanwhile, Beyoncé’s best friend and another member of Girl’s Tyme, LaTavia Roberson, was living her own private hell as she was repeatedly molested by a Houston cop, the book alleged.
LaTavia has since confirmed the abuse, and according to Brian, it was that incident and witnessing Mathew’s rages that turned Beyoncé from a sweet Houston girl to a ruthless international pop icon.
“After this Beyoncé started to get thick skin,” he wrote. “She was more edgy and protective. You could see Beyoncé sort of grow up.”