They're celebrated as one of the greatest girl groups of all time, but not everyone loved Destiny's Child. The popular trio delivered some of our favorite girl power anthems during their heyday, but back in 2001, the singers took to Hot 97's Summer Jam stage and were met with a roaring "boo" from the audience. At the time, the reception was disheartening, but Kelly Rowland told the radio station that they learned from the experience.
"It prepared us, because what was so interesting was like, around that time Destiny’s Child was crossing over, and because we were crossing over, I think that it was a question if we were still down or Black, or...you know what I mean?” said Kelly. "At that time we crossed over so that was just in question, which is ridiculous." She added that the way the group looked at it, if they were switching lanes, they wanted to make sure their community was represented and came with them. However, it didn't quite go down like that, initially.
“Before we went out there, it was that overwhelming loud ‘boo’ and it was...we were looking at each other like ‘Are we going to do this, are we going to go out here?’" Kelly added. "I saw the look in [Beyonce’s] eyes and I was like, ‘If she’s going out there I’m not letting her go out there by herself. Like, I’m going with her.’ And then it was like a trickle effect, and then we were out there, we were on the stage.”
As soon as they performed their set, they ran off stage and got as far away from Summer Jam as they could.“I don’t think it was anything anybody could’ve told us at that time. Here we are at the height of our career and we are being praised everywhere except for in our neighborhood," Kelly recalled. "In the space that first took us on and gave us so much love."
The group realized that the experience is apart of growing as artists and comes with success, so they chose not to dwell on the negatives. Watch Kelly Rowland chop it up with Hot 97 below.
