Report: Beyonce & Jay Z Split Up For A Year Over Rihanna Cheating Suspicions (Video)

Video After The Jump

A new tell-all book by author J. Randy Taraborrelli, Becoming Beyoncé: The Untold Story, is already reopening old wounds before it's release.

The biggest bombshell in the unauthorized biography involves Beyoncé splitting from Jay Z for a year because of suspicions he was cheating with Rihanna.

The split occurred 2005, coinciding with the release of Riri's debut album, Music of the Sun. Jay and Bey were not yet married, but had been dating for several years.

Taraborrelli spoke with Entertainment Tonight about the lie that Rihanna's former publicist, Jonathan Hay, started to help jump start his client's then fledgling career.

Taraborrelli doesn't believe that Jay Z has ever cheated on Beyoncé in their 15 years of being together. As for those rumors that the rapper started seeing Rihanna after signing her as an artist? The author claims that was all for show, saying a false report was fabricated by a publicist connected to Jay Z and Rihanna in order to "boost her career" and get the Barbados native's first song, "Pon De Replay," up on the charts. "It was total fiction," Taraborrelli says.

However, he says the rumor did drive a wedge between Beyoncé and Jay Z. "Beyoncé didn't know what to make of this, and it actually ended up breaking them up for a time," he claims. "They spent maybe a year apart from each other because Beyoncé just wasn't sure of what to make of the situation with Rihanna."

"It's safe to say that Rihanna and Beyonce are friends," Taraborelli adds of the singers' current relationship.

Hay now admits to starting the false story. In a new interview with the New York Daily News, he says he never meant for the publicity stunt to spin out of control like it eventually did. He says he's since apologized to Jay.

"I was blindsided by the news of ‘Becoming Beyoncé’ coming out and it couldn't come at a worse time for me,” Hay said in a statement. “I'm currently releasing projects with my label Urban Hitchcock through Tidal, a company that is owned by Jay Z and Beyoncé ... Hopefully this news hasn't ruined that relationship for me. The pr stunt that I did was out of desperation to help break ‘Pon de Replay’ It was reckless and I didn't think it was going to work. I was just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick."