Kelly Rowland comes home to headline AIDS Walk Atlanta
Kelly Rowland wants Atlanta to remember something about her.
Before growing up in Houston, Texas. Before Destiny’s Child. Before the Grammy Awards, movies and more than three decades in the spotlight, there was Atlanta.
“Atlanta is my home. Atlanta birthed me,” Rowland said. “I think that always gets lost in the sauce for some strange reason.”
On Saturday, the singer will return home for a cause she says is deeply connected to the city that shaped her. Rowland will headline the 35th annual AIDS Walk Atlanta Music Festival and 5K Run.
Hosted by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the event at Piedmont Park combines music and fundraising with HIV testing, prevention and awareness.
It is expected to raise more than $1 million for 12 local HIV/AIDS service organizations.
“I care about my community. I care about what happens,” Rowland said. “It’s just continuing to get the message out. Encouraging everyone to protect themselves and look after each other as a community, period.”
Atlanta in her bones
Rowland is most closely associated with Houston, where Destiny’s Child was formed.
She, Beyoncé Knowles and Michelle Williams would eventually become one of the most recognizable R&B groups of their generation.
But she was born in Atlanta.
A “Crawford Long (hospital) baby,” as she puts it, Rowland spent her early childhood here before her mother’s job took the family to Texas.
“Atlanta’s fed me more than Atlanta knows. Anytime I’m there, I’m humbled. I’m grateful because it’s the city that bore me,” she said. “The taste and flavor and flyness of Atlanta, I have a piece of that in my bones. I take that very seriously.”
Some of her strongest memories of Atlanta are musical.
She remembers walking with her mother and hearing Pebbles and Babyface blasting from passing cars. She remembers V-103 providing a soundtrack that included Anita Baker and, later, Boyz II Men.
“It was my taste of R&B,” Rowland said.
During the early days of Destiny’s Child, the group traveled to Atlanta in search of a record deal.
The city was becoming a capital of Black music and culture. TLC was breaking through. Jermaine Dupri and So So Def were rising. LaFace Records had made the city an R&B destination, while Outkast and Goodie Mob were helping establish a distinctly Southern voice in hip-hop.
And Freaknik was turning the city into an annual destination for young Black people from across the country.
“It was just rich and thick with culture, Black culture,” Rowland said. “I remember saying, ‘I never want to leave here,’ because it had so much great energy. It’s a bang-on-your-chest, proud Blackness that I love about Atlanta.”
A conversation that cannot disappear
Rowland’s return comes as organizers of AIDS Walk Atlanta are trying to keep HIV visible to a generation that did not experience the fear and public attention surrounding the epidemic during the 1980s and 1990s.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data compiled by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Black Georgians accounted for 1,569 of the state’s 2,359 new HIV diagnoses in 2023, nearly two-thirds of the total. The diagnosis rate among Black Georgians was 53.2 per 100,000, compared with 38 among Hispanic and Latino residents and 7.1 among white residents.
The disparity was even more pronounced in metro Atlanta, where Black residents accounted for nearly 69% of new HIV diagnoses. Together, Black and Latino residents represented about 85% of the region’s new diagnoses, according to an AJC analysis of the CDC data compiled by AHF.
For Rowland, advocacy around HIV and AIDS is not new.
In 2008, a decade after Destiny’s Child released its debut album, Rowland became the first ambassador for MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, an organization focused on HIV prevention and education among young people.
As part of that work, Rowland traveled to Africa, where she publicly took an HIV test at Kenyatta National Hospital in Kenya to encourage young people to know their HIV status and to challenge the stigma surrounding testing.
“For me, knowing your status is glamorous because then you get to carry that with you and you get to protect yourself,” Rowland told CNN at the time.
Nearly two decades later, Rowland says that visibility is still needed. She remembers when HIV and AIDS messages seemed to be everywhere.
“I saw it on billboards. I saw it on buses,” Rowland said. “Especially with how messages pass so fast now, why shouldn’t we still see it everywhere?”
Artists can also help keep the issue visible, Rowland said, pointing to TLC’s use of its platform during the 1990s to promote safer sex and HIV awareness.
“More conversations need to be had when it comes to AIDS and HIV, period,” she said.
Beyond the concert, she wants people leaving Piedmont Park thinking about “life, quality of life, community” and caring for themselves and the people around them.
“It’s just opening up a space of conversation with no judgment,” Rowland said. “I think that there’s also so much judgment around it, and we got to stop that.”
“To me, love has no judgment.”
A party with a purpose
Since Rowland was announced as the headliner, AIDS Walk Atlanta has drawn the largest number of registered participants in its 35-year history, said Imara Canady, national director of communications and community engagement for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
“We really like to call it a party with a purpose,” Canady said.
The money raised is unrestricted, allowing beneficiary organizations to pay for expenses such as staffing and facilities that some traditional grants do not cover.
This year’s beneficiaries include AID Atlanta, the Center for Black Women’s Wellness, Georgia Equality, Lost-n-Found Youth and Positive Impact Health Centers.
Canady said organizers want the festival to provide “a safe, destigmatizing environment” where people can enjoy the music, raise money and get tested.
Atlanta R&B singer Algebra Blessett and DJ Sed the Saint will open the music festival following the 5K walk and run. Registration begins at 9 a.m., the walk and run at 11 a.m. and the music festival at 11:45 a.m. in Piedmont Park’s Meadow.
Back where it started
Rowland’s latest return to Atlanta extends beyond Saturday’s performance. She is making music here again.
Asked what was next for her musically, Rowland initially offered only a tease.
“I am back in the studio,” she said. “That’s all you’ll get from me.”
She did admit, however, that she has been spending considerable time in Atlanta and recording with three producers deeply connected to the city’s R&B history: Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox and The-Dream.
“We’ve had some really wonderful sessions,” Rowland said.
More than three decades after coming to Atlanta with the young group that would become Destiny’s Child, Rowland finds herself making music here again. This time, she returns as both an artist and an advocate.
“I’m just really grateful,” Rowland said, “to be in my roots.”