#217: Super Publicist Yvette Noel-Schure

This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we welcome super publicist (Beyonce, Destiny's Child, John Legend, Mariah Carey, Prince) and favorite daughter of Grenada, Yvette Noel-Schure, to the Upper West Side! Yvette discusses growing up in Birch Grove, Grenada, living with her grandparents when her mother was sent to the United States for medical treatment, doing the extensive shopping her for grandfather's supermarket as a child, and knowing early how special her homeland was. We talk about her move to New York City as a teenager, how hard a transition it was socially and environmentally, working hard in school in the hopes of one day becoming a writer, riding the subway for the first time, and taking a job at Burger King where the love of her life would be standing on line. Yvette gets into her college years studying journalism at City College of New York with her first son by her side, living next door to the Hells Angels, getting her drivers license in order to commute to her first gig at a newspaper, eventually finding a position at Black Beat Magazine, scoring a coveted interview with Tupac on the set of Poetic Justice, and why Sony Music approached her to become a publicist. We discuss landing Mariah's Ebony Magazine cover, getting trampled by teenagers looking to get a piece of Bow Wow in Times Square, Prince's incredible memory of the first time he was in a room with Yvette, and what how Yvette worked to set Destiny's Child apart in an overly-crowded girl-group space. We talk about John Legend's classic debut album, the stellar team who worked at Columbia/Sony Urban in those days, giving journalists a midnight phone call to announce Beyonce's surprise album release, the wonderful humans that Tina Knowles-Lawson and Matthew Knowles are, and how Yvette's role as publicist has evolved as Beyonce's one-of-a-kind stature and talent has grown through the years. All that, plus why she'll never write a book about the music industry, how she sees every person that enters her life, why she left Sony Music, the house fire that changed her life, and so much more!