Rihanna opened up about the origins of her relationship with A$AP Rocky in a new interview Tuesday, telling Interview that despite first being introduced in 2012, it wasn’t until 2019 that they started “dating with a lot of caution.”
Rihanna and Rocky, with whom she now has two children, first became truly acquainted, she said, at the VMAs in 2012, when the rapper grabbed her behind.
“He grabbed my ass!” she said. “That was the day that we thought we met. At rehearsal, so it was, like, manager to manager, client to client... My team was worried that I wanted to have his head on a fucking mantle,” she added. “But I was like, ‘Ah, nah.’ That’s why everybody was like, ‘Oh my god. She likes him.’”
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Years later, Rihanna and Rocky decided to give seeing each other a real shot, she told interviewer Mel Ottenberg.
“We’ve known each other for a long time. I’ve seen him in relationships. He’s seen me in relationships,” she said. “We’ve seen each other outside of relationships. We knew what we’re capable of, and the trouble that we could bring to each other’s lives. We can make or break each other’s hearts. And so, we started dating with a lot of caution.”
“I just let whatever was supposed to happen, happen,” Rihanna continued. “It was just, ‘This is a flower. It’s either going to die or blossom. But I’m going to let it decide itself.’”
In the recent years of her career, Rihanna has become known for many things unrelated to pop music, the industry upon which she built her name; her makeup and lingerie lines are just a few examples. But sharing details with the press concerning Rocky and her kids has never been her style—until now.
In 2022, Rihanna vaguely told Vogue that Rocky had become her “family” during the pandemic and that they never really planned to have kids.
“You really don’t remember life before, that’s the craziest thing ever,” she told British Vogue of motherhood the following year. “You literally try to remember it—and there are photos of my life before—but the feeling, the desires, the things that you enjoy, everything, you just don’t identify with it because you don’t even allow yourself mentally to get that far, because... Because it doesn’t matter.”
This week, she went deeper on both counts.
“COVID sped up our relationship, which I felt like god knew we needed because we were going to start a family,” she continued to Interview about Rocky. “I let god lead and just let go. Because in previous relationships, I tried and tried and tried my best, and you still feel like it’s not enough. So when someone sees you completely, and believes in you, and thinks you’re worthy of being the mother of their kids, it’s a great feeling. I felt the same about him. I knew he would be a great dad.”
Rihanna was less forthcoming about her two young children, but she did reveal the surprisingly basic songs she sings to them at bedtime, including “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” Of her son RZA, she added, “‘The Wheels on the Bus’ is a favorite from the beginning till now. That’s just a classic.”
