We know, we know: Beyoncé is a goddess. Yet that doesn’t mean she doesn’t possess the frailty of an average human. For even goddesses have been known to make mistakes (remember how Juno couldn’t adequately raise the Hydra she created to kill Hercules?). And one of the mistakes Beyoncé made in her early career–along with being in the movies like The Fighting Temptations and The Pink Panther during the initial phase of her breakaway from Destiny’s Child–was being “linked to” Sisqó. We all know that, even if fans of Bey and the Queen Bey herself would like to downplay it as part of a convenient “did they or didn’t they” publicity stunt, the fact is, where there’s smoke, there’s always fire. Just like there was when reports circulated of Yoncé succumbing to the “temptation” of a beso from Justin Timberlake at a party circa 1998 (before Justin and Britney would become an official item in ‘99). Ironically, Destiny’s Child would back out of being an opening act for *NSYNC on their No Strings Attached Tour in 2000, while Sisqó would agree to perform before himself backing out to film Get Over It (remember, that 2001 movie with Kirsten Dunst?).
More than sharing the bond of having a letter in their name with an accent over it, as co-hosts of the MTV Movie Awards pre-show (both still being low enough on the pop culture totem pole to agree to such a task, for this was Destiny’s Child before “Survivor” and Sisqó before “Thong Song” would reanimate during the summer of that year), the two coordinated their looks long before Britney and Justin and bantered for the cameras. The unshakeable Justin would also show up that night to perform “It’s Gonna Be Me” with *NSYNC, making Beyoncé her own sort of Carrie Bradshaw caught between two men for the evening, as Sarah Jessica Parker herself hosted the show at one of the heights of Sex and the City’s rising popularity, you know, before it was chic to keep bringing up all the retrospectively problematic instances about it. Still, SATC’s racial tone deafness never stopped Bey from loving it like everyone else (or indirectly making herself part of the catastrophe that was Sex and the City 2), even getting a mention in “‘03 Bonnie and Clyde” as Jay-Z remarked, “Only time we don’t speak is during Sex and the City/She gets Carrie fever, but soon as the show’s over/She’s right back to being my soldier.” Uncomfortably enough, the show’s indelicacy with “handling” black people (on the one-off occasions when it would) persisted with a cameo by Samantha (Kim Cattrall) in the parody intro to the awards, noting of Carrie’s foray into The Matrix that she wants to hear more about “the big black man” a.k.a. Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus.
Beyoncé, instead, seemed to prefer a small black man who could appreciate an ass that swallows up a thong. Yes, she wanted him to “unleash his dragon,” and, as one of the “hottest” stars of the moment, it couldn’t hurt to help hers shine a little more as well. What’s more, Sisqó is in keeping with a certain “type” Beyoncé seemed to have in the early 00s, i.e. Marques Houston. Better known as Roger from Sister, Sister, though some will say he is an R&B musician. That Destiny’s Child also opened for Dru Hill during their germinal days means that Yoncé was well-acquainted with Sisqó before the 2000 MTV Movie Awards ever came along. And we all know what can happen on tour. Not necessarily “staying” on tour afterward.
However brief the “fling” between the two might have been, Sisqó stands out as being one of the few men to have graced Bey’s “holy punani” before Jay-Z became her full-time man (though she not so much his full-time woman–alas, Beyoncé has a history of letting her boyfriends of a longstanding variety cheat on her and then forgiving them… ahem, Lyndall Locke). It is perhaps because Beyoncé never “catted around” that much before we knew her as “Mrs. Carter” that she seems so pure, so unbesmirchable and godly. Theoretically, this lack of experience might have been what led to Jay stepping out. Unless, of course, Bey has just simply always had really good PR management and has kept any signs of past ho-dom to a bare minimum on the record-keeping front.
Whatever the case, Sisqó isn’t exactly “worthy” of the Beyoncé we’ve come to know in the present, deified so thoughtlessly that she’s on par with being the Radha of American pop culture (and after all, Bey has never had trouble appropriating Indian culture). And while Jay-Z has certainly got more musical clout than that of a one-hit wonder, let’s just say his body might be better off with the head of Sisqó atop it.
