DESTINY’S CHILD

The writing's really on the wall!

I think what helps is that we have great family and great friends, and they share with us their situations. So you just write about it.

I don’t think it’s the worst if you wanna sell records. You need to travel and tell people about your record, especially if you’re excited about it like we are.

From a distance, you might not recognize Destinys Child among all the girl groups. Yet look a little closer, and you’ll begin to see the distinguishing characteristics - highly polished, well dressed, carefully coifed and, oh, did we mention highly polished?

Having been together as a group for almost eight years, the quartet (Beyonce, Kelly, LaTavia, LaToya) - who only now can see an R-rated movie unsupervised - has its diva act down to a science: Honesty is at a minimum,platitudes reign over their conversation.

One would have expected this kind of Pavlovian training for the first album, particularly after it spawned the sassy, Wyclef-remixed No, No, No. But for The Writing’s on the Wall, an album that is ostensibly more mature, more personal, and just a hint more experienced, one would expect unprompted teenage confessionals.

But right through this conversaton, sourced from CDNow, Kelly aRowland, the group’s true ingenue - intelligent, beautiful, and siren-like - the protocol was not to be broken.

So where am I getting you at right now?
Kelly Rowland: Right now we’re in Los Angeles. Tomorrow, we’ll be somewhere else, and the day after that somewhere else. But we’ll sell some records though.

There’s no shame in that.
Not at all.

Is that one of the worst things, not necessarily about fame, but about the whole music marketing process?
I don’t think it’s the worst if you wanna sell records. You need to travel and tell people about your record, especially if you’re excited about it like we are.

So do you miss home?
Oh, definitely. Sometimes I wish I could just pack home right up in a little bag and take it everywhere with me.

Isn’t your bus big enough?
Not at all!

Does any of your family come on the road with you?
LaTavia’s mom comes on the road with us. She’s our chaperone. And Beyonce’s mom is our hairstylist. She’s kinda like my auntie, ’cause I’ve been living with her for such a long time.

So was that tough coming up so young in the industry? Weren’t you all around 15 on the last album? Being detached from a normal youth lifestyle, that must have taken some serious maturity.

True, but it wasn’t new to us. Our manager always taught us, since the age of 10, that we would always be moving, jumping to different cities, so we’ve been trained to do this since we were younger.

You’ve been together since you were 10?
No doubt.

And when was the last time you spent more than a week at a time at home [in Houston]?
I can’t remember. I honestly can’t. Ever since we’ve started, we’ve just been busy, and it hasn’t stopped.

And so even in the downtime between the two records you didn’t make it home?
Maybe there was a week, but we wanted to get right to the next album, because as soon as the first one starts dying down, you gotta get jump on the next one.

You’re working with new producers on this record?
A lot of them are new, but we stayed with some, like Dwayne Wiggins [formerly of Tony Toni Tone]. But we got Rodney Jerkins this time. We got Chad Elliott, Missy Elliott.

Sean Elliott? Jumbo Elliott?
No, no, no, no, no. Also, Beyonce produced on this album, and we wrote on it, too, so it felt a lot more personal than our last one. It’s about life and love. And everybody knows about life and love!

But you’re on the road so much. Isn’t it difficult to learn about life and love when you’re always on the move from city to city and people to people?
I think what helps is that we have great family and great friends, and they share with us their situations. So you just write about it.

OK, when I was 17, I didn’t know anything about love, and I didn’t know anything about bills, either. What do you know about bills anyway?
What we know about bills? Man, all the bills we listed in the song is all the bills we pay. We still living with our mothers, so we know about a phone bill, we know about a car note. But we don’t want no guy to pay our bills. If he’s running them up, then he gotta pay them.

But you don’t pay them yourself?
No.

When I first heard the song, it reminded me of the No Scrubs/No Pigeons debate. Is that why you released it as the first single off the record?
It was perfect timing. We have a great manager and a great record company, and they thought this was the perfect time to put that song out.

And Sporty Thievz are trying to do a response as well?
Well, they’re definitely on our remix for Bills ..., and they’re doing all types of crazy stuff. They’re hilarious.

OK, I have to ask this question. You look at a group like Boyz II Men, you know they have tons of female groupies throwing themselves at them, but you never hear about female groups having male groupies. Do you have those kinds of fans?
You know, I have to say that we have great fans, but we really don’t hang backstage after we finish the show. We do the show, and we leave.

Is that a security and protection measure?
No. It’s just that you move from city to city each day, and you want to be rested, so we don’t even have time for groupies.

So when do you deal with your fans?
Sometimes we go on the Internet, into fan chat rooms. Sometimes people don’t believe it’s us.

So you just sneak on there anonymously?
No, we say who we are, but they never believe us because so many people will try and do that. They’ll just tell us “Please stop playing. Destiny’s Child don’t have that kind of time.” But we’ll send e-mail to our fans, and sometimes, those who give a phone number in a letter we’ll call back.

Ever leave any nasty voicemail messages?
No, never.