Before Destiny's Child, the girls rehearsed for tips in a Houston hair salon
The group that became Destiny's Child tested its routines in Tina Knowles's Houston salon, where customers tipped and critiqued them. They lost on Star Search, cycled through names like Cliché and the Dolls, and were dropped by one label before releasing anything. The name that finally stuck came from a passage in the Book of Isaiah.
Beyoncé met LaTavia Roberson in 1990 at an audition for a girl group that rapped and danced on Houston's talent show circuit; Kelly Rowland, who was living in the Knowles house, joined in 1992. After the Star Search loss, which Beyoncé blamed on rapping instead of singing, her father Mathew Knowles took over as manager, cut the group to four and added LeToya Luckett. He ran summer boot camps in dance and singing, and in 1995 quit his job selling medical equipment, halving the family's income.
Columbia signed them in 1996. The debut single No, No, No reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997, and the 1999 album The Writing's on the Wall produced chart-toppers in Bills, Bills, Bills and Say My Name, eventually selling over 13 million copies worldwide.
Success came with a rupture. In December 1999 Luckett and Roberson tried to break from Mathew, accusing him of taking too large a share and favouring his daughter and Rowland. They learned they had been replaced when the Say My Name video premiered with two new faces, Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin. Lawsuits followed, and Franklin left after five months, leaving a trio. Oddly, the publicity helped turn them into a pop phenomenon.
Independent Women Part I, written for the Charlie's Angels soundtrack, held the top spot for eleven straight weeks, and Survivor, largely co-written and co-produced by Beyoncé, opened at number one in 2001 with 663,000 copies sold in a week. The group took a hiatus for solo careers, returned for Destiny Fulfilled in 2004, and disbanded in 2006, having sold an estimated 60 million records.
Source: Destiny's Child
