The spoiler of the year did not come when those hackers leaked a bunch of Orange is the New Black episodes earlier this year. It came yesterday, when Matthew Knowles became the first member of Beyoncé’s family to confirm the birth of her and Jay-Z’s twins. When it comes to making her private life public, Beyoncé does everything with intentionality and perfect execution. A month after their classy official statement on the birth of Blue Ivy, we got a perfectly angled picture of the infant with a handwritten letter signed by the Carters.
For the Beyhive, our excitement about the actual birth of the twins is overshadowed by the anticipation of exactly how Beyoncé is going to tell us about it. We may as well be waiting for a new video to drop. Frankly, Matthew’s textgram with a cheesy balloon background and hashtags was not the announcement we were looking forward to. This is part of the reason he’s currently being dragged on social media, but it certainly isn’t the only reason.
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Jay-Z wasn’t the only subject of the shots fired on Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Many of the songs and poems in the film also appeared to reference the shortcomings of her own father. Following his split as Bey’s manager, and his divorce from my mom Tina Lawson, it was revealed that Matthew fathered a child while still married to Lawson. Beyoncé addressed the toll that the dissolution of their professional partnership had on her relationship with her father in the HBO documentary, Life is But A Dream. A leaked single called “Ring Off” also suggested that she supported her mother in ending her marriage.
The evidence that Matthew isn’t necessarily in his daughter’s inner circle is overwhelming, and this is the primary motivation behind the Beyhive’s latest swarm. That Bey tapped him to be the first person from her family to break the news seems highly unlikely under these circumstances, so many of us are wondering if he crossed a line. The Knowles patriarch's announcement feels exploitative, with its hashtags and his Instagram handle nestled at the bottom. With that background, it certainly doesn’t appear to have come from Beyoncé’s camp. This is the same woman who carried her Grammys acceptance speech on gold-tinted paper. Those e-card template balloons are not part of Beyoncé's aesthetic. If she was going to approve an announcement, she would have drafted up some better layout options.
As a card-carrying member of the Beyhive, I admit that we can be overprotective, even petty, when it comes to Queen Bey. But side-eyes are definitely in order for this. “I ain’t sorry.” I’ll keep holding my breath for the well-packaged announcement from the Carters themselves.