Key Takeaways
- Kelly Rowland’s father saw her perform live for the first time during her Atlanta tour stop.
- The performance included a personal dedication of “Dilemma” to her father, Christopher Lovett.
- Their reunion in 2018 followed decades of estrangement and has since led to public moments of healing.
Kelly Rowland had a full-circle moment in Atlanta last week. While performing as an opener on Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine Tour,” the R&B star paused her set to acknowledge a face she once didn’t allow anywhere near the stage — her father, Christopher Lovett. Thursday, (Dec. 4), marked the first time he had ever seen her perform live.
Rowland dedicated “Dilemma” to him as he watched from the audience alongside her son. “I love and need and want you, daddy,” she sang to him. It was a quiet, emotional moment posted by Tina Knowles, who has long referred to Rowland as her “other daughter.”
“WOW, I am in tears looking at this. They are tears of joy. It was my prayer that @kellyrowland would someday reunite with her dad. She did a few years ago. They are so happy with each other. This is truly a joy to see,” Knowles wrote on Instagram.
The shout-out carried even more weight because the 44-year-old once made sure Lovett couldn’t get anywhere near venues where Destiny’s Child was performing. In a 2022 appearance on “Today,” which REVOLT previously covered, Rowland explained how deep her hurt ran during their decades-long estrangement. She admitted she was so upset that she instructed security to keep him out. "For as long as I can remember, it was me and my mom. My understanding of where my dad was as a kid was that he was not really ready as a father," she began in an interview. "I was angry at him. I was disappointed in him. I had all of those feelings of abandonment. I think as a kid, you just feel like if they're not there, they don't want to be here. So that's what I felt, and that feeling sucked.”
Lovett shared his side of that pain during the conversation. “People used to tell me, ‘I saw your daughter,’ and I used to sit there and say, ‘Well, I didn’t,’ and it used to hurt,” he told the host at the time. “So when Kelly started performing in certain places, I followed her. And when I did go to a couple of places, I didn’t get a chance to see her because security wouldn’t let me see her. It was sad really… I wanted to tell Kelly that I love her and that I never gave her up.”
The Atlanta-born and Houston-raised singer said becoming a mother shifted something in her. After giving birth to her first son, Titan, she began wondering whether healing with her father was possible, especially while grieving the loss of her own mother, Doris Rowland Garrison, who died three weeks after Titan was born. She eventually asked JAY-Z for advice, recalling, “He said, ‘Love is all about risk. You gotta decide if you’re gonna jump.’ … ‘Are you gonna jump?’” Her answer, she explained, was yes.
Their reunion happened in 2018 at an Atlanta hotel, where they talked for two hours. “I can only imagine what it felt like to have everything that you want to say for so many years to your child. I just allowed him the space, and it was incredible,” she told “Today.” “Underneath all of the disappointment and hurt and anger and fear, that’s somebody you love.” She continued, “I had to give my dad grace… It’s never too late. Forgiveness is always right there.”
How Kelly Rowland and her father’s relationship rebuilt over time
Rowland has been open on social media about what reconnecting has meant to her. In a Father’s Day post shared in 2020, she wrote about their first meeting after “30 years of not seeing him, not speaking to him,” revealing her anxiety, the healing that followed, and the joy of finally hearing her father tell her she was “smart and beautiful.” She ended the message with, “I love you, daddy, and love being your little girl… even at 39! Lol. P.S. We are making up for lost time, and when I tell you, him telling me how smart and beautiful I am... will never get old!