Before Destiny’s Child became the mega group we know them as today, they were simply a teen girl group that record executives didn’t expect much from, so says their then-publicist Yvette Noel-Schure. Yvette, who still handles publicity for Beyoncé under her own PR firm Schure Media Group, revealed in an interview with The Jake Sasseville Show that during her stint of employment with Columbia Records, her boss pretty much wanted her to babysit the foursome until they either transferred to another label or went back home to Texas.
“I remember sitting at Columbia Records and Larry Jenkins, who I will praise to the day I die for giving me that opportunity, he said ‘We just signed a girl group from Houston, you just came from Black Beat, you can get along with these teenagers, dah. You should take them, dah.’ ‘” Yvette recalled.
She went on to note that at the time, due to the success of girl groups such as TLC and En Vogue, label execs simply expected the group being signed to Columbia to be nothing more than a learning experience for the teens.
“I knew in that moment that he did not know what the capacity for success would be for this girl group. TLC was so big, En Vogue a little older and killing it vocally and I don’t know if the plan was to set in place. I believe in that moment, Larry said, ‘If nothing comes of this, Yvette can teach them a few things and I don’t know that he expected me to be a great publicist to this great group. I think he thought ‘For as long as we have them on the label, Yvette can be a mother figure …”
Although Yvette says that while there wasn’t a whole lot that she was able to teach the girls, she was able to mold them into the poised public figures we know them as today.
“I sat down with them [Destiny’s Child] and did makeup lessons but they were pretty advanced in terms of beauty because Ms. Tina Knowles was such a central figure in the lives of the girls of Destiny’s Child. Not just Beyoncé, but Kelly who was raised in her house, LaTavia and LeToya, the original two members, their friendship blossomed in that house. They understood about hair and how they wanted to look, it was the most incredible thing. But I knew in that moment that if Columbia Records trusted me with these young women, and if Tina Knowles and Matthew Knowles trusted me to leave a room and leave me with these young women and knew that if they walked out of a room, I wasn’t going to be shooting up a needle or smoking a blunt or cursing. These were young girls. I knew the responsibility of that moment and I knew being a publicist was not what I needed to do. I needed to be a teacher, a guide and a mentor.”
She continues:
“There wasn’t a lot I could teach those girls, they could sing the ‘ABC’s’ and make me look like … but it was about ‘Here’s how I live my life,’ ‘Here’s how I come to work and I work really, really hard.’ I can not teach you how to sing but I will tell you that when you enter the room, your interview has begun. Everything is on the record, what you say, what you did, if you were slumping in your chair — so don’t slump in your chair because that’s going to be part of the description in the interview.”
“One of the things I know that Beyoncé probably appreciates about me, especially now that she has created her own family… is that I always said to the girls, at the end of everything, ‘I’m going home to my babies.’ It got to the point where the girls of Destiny’s Child used to mouth it to me after the interviews or a press day and I would say ‘I’m going to meet my babies’ and they’d mouth ‘She’s going to meet her babies.’
I was making it very clear that the work is over now for me.”
Listen to Yvette’s full interview on the next page.
