After being friends for years, A$AP Rocky made Rihanna feel like the only girl in the world—and now they’re parents of three children together.
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky found love in what’s usually a pretty hopeless place.
“People don’t get out of the friend zone very easily with me,” the singer born Robin Fenty told Vogue in 2022 of the former pal who won her heart. “And I certainly took a while to get over how much I know him and how much he knows me, because we also know how much trouble we can land each other in.”
But it was a risk well worth taking, Rihanna and A$AP (born Rakim Mayers) now parents of three after welcoming Rocki Irish Mayers on Sept. 13. Their new addition joins brothers RZA, 3, and Riot Rose, 2, in the family fold.
And it turns out that the friend zone can contain multitudes.
“We’re best friends, with a baby,” Rihanna, 37, told British Vogue for a March 2023 cover story. “We have to be on the same page, but we’ve always kind of had that in our relationship. Everything changes when you have a baby but I wouldn’t say it’s done anything but made us closer.”
Yet how did the couple go from flirtatious friends to S.O.s?
A$AP Rocky, 36, first joined forces with Rihanna to record a remix of her song “Cockiness (Love It)” in 2012, which they then performed together at the MTV Video Music Awards that September—part of her medley with, ahem, “We Found Love.”
Fans would’ve been forgiven for thinking something was up between them.
“I didn’t mean for the ass grab to be the thing,” A$AP told Complex in November 2012 about giving her bum a squeeze as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek after cranking out his verse. “I don’t fiend for fake publicity s–t.”
Rihanna coolly disentangled herself at the VMAs, but everyone wanted to know whether that moment was planned or spontaneous—and whether she was OK with it.
“I got like this cocky holy ghost that came into me,” A$AP explained to Hot 97’s Angie Martinez. “We had fun, we had a great time and I thank her for that. I doubt I could get that close if she didn’t want me to do something like that.”
Or she at least didn’t hate it.
“He grabbed my ass on stage. That was not part of the rehearsal!” Rihanna told Vogue in 2022. “I was like, What are you doing?!”
But she also remembered her manager quipping that she must like A$AP at least a little, because she didn’t give him hell for his impertinence. In fact, she hired him.
The “F–kin’ Problems” rapper spent three months in early 2013 as the opening act on Rihanna’s Diamonds World Tour.
“That was a special request,” A$AP said on Power 106 about getting the coveted call to join her on tour (before the interview descended into jokes about grabbing butts).
Before the tour even started, though, the “L$D” artist started dating Chanel Iman, and they were reportedly engaged for a couple of months before breaking up in 2014.
“I got really depressed because I knew that she deserves better than me,” A$AP told MTV in March 2015. “That’s the truth and everybody knows it.”
But Rihanna said she’d always be a friend and starred in his November 2013 video for “Fashion Killa.”
A$AP has since pinpointed New York’s Mercer Hotel, where they filmed the video with director Virgil Abloh, as the hopeful place Rihanna fell in love with him.
“I knew from when we were younger,” he told W in 2024. “We both did, I think. So it was only right when we got older. We just kind of reconnected.”
And by then they had more to bond over.
“We saw fashion the same. We saw creative the same,” Rihanna told stylist Mel Ottenberg for Interview in the spring of 2024. “We ended up in the same circles a lot. And past that, when we grew up, we ended up supporting each other’s brands and products and creative all the time. I would wear his s–t, he would show up to my launches. But it wasn’t until the end of 2019…”
That December, A$AP and Rihanna—who previously dated Hassan Jameel for three years—elegantly posed on the red carpet at the British Fashion Awards. They were then spotted looking chummy backstage at the Yams Day Benefit Concert in January 2020.
Rihanna told British Vogue in early 2020, when asked where she pictured herself after another decade, “Ten years? I’ll be 42! I’ll be ancient. I’ll have kids—three or four of ’em.”
And would she be up for starting a family herself if Mr. Right didn’t come along?
“Hell, yeah,” she replied. “I feel like society makes me want to feel like, ‘Oh, you got it wrong…’ They diminish you as a mother if there’s not a dad in your kids’ lives. But the only thing that matters is happiness, that’s the only healthy relationship between a parent and a child. That’s the only thing that can raise a child truly, is love.”
Rihanna had been “realizing life is really short,” she continued. “You don’t have a lot of time to tolerate s–t, you know? You put so much on your plate. When you’re overwhelmed, you need to start cutting things out. And I’m overwhelmed too much. What’s happening now is that I’m going back to black and white. My gray area is shutting down.”
Ultimately, she concluded, “I’ve always searched for what I can hold on to in terms of sanity and loyalty. I’ve always searched for what’s real.”
Enter the pandemic, which allowed her and A$AP more alone time than their usual schedules might have allowed.
That summer Rihanna tapped A$AP to be a face of Fenty Skin and they both had a bit of a glow while teaming up to promote the brand. She quizzed him in a “Face to Face” video for GQ while he tossed 15 questions her way for Vogue. Asked what the hardest part of working with her was, A$AP replied that it was “not goofing off and laughing the whole time…The hardest part is not having too much fun.”
But they got super close when they drove from Los Angeles to New York together (on a luxury tour bus), taking in the sights at a few national parks and soaking up the vibes in culturally rich cities like Memphis along the way.
“I met myself,” A$AP told GQ when asked who he met on the road trip. “Being able to drive and do a tour without feeling like it was an occupation or an obligated job agreement, I feel like that experience is like none other.”
The music he was working on was “absolutely” influenced by his relationship, he noted, explaining, “I think it’s important to have somebody that you can bounce those creative juices and ideas off of.”
(And who understands that the creative process takes time: A$AP’s years-in-the-making fourth studio album Don’t Be Dumb remains an upcoming release.)
For A$AP, life had become “so much better” since he and Rihanna got together. “She amounts to probably, like, a million of the other ones,” the artist told GQ. “I think when you know, you know. She’s the One.”
Rihanna, pregnant with their first child at the time, reflected to Vogue in the spring of 2022 about their intimate road trip, “He became my family in that time. I cooked our food on this little janky grill I bought from Walmart. I still have it, too. It works like nobody’s business. I love the simple things but also the grand adventures. There’s no pretentious my-brand-your-brand bulls–t, it’s just us living. I just feel like I can do any part of life by his side.”
That soon included parenting, RZA arriving on May 13, 2022.
Less than a year later, Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show performance served as a nationally televised pregnancy reveal, the artist strategically camouflaging and then accenting her bump in a Loewe jumpsuit, bra plate and custom Alaïa coat.
Riot Rose was born Aug. 1.
Rihanna told E! News that December she had her “fingers crossed” for a girl next time, hinting that she and A$AP weren’t done expanding their family. But in the meantime, she put it to E! in April 2024, “It makes me feel really cool to be a boy mom. I get to be as casual and busted as I want to, but it also forces me to embrace the epic things about being a woman and female and all my femininity—I embrace it so much more now.”
In any case, RZA and Riot were “delighted” to be getting another sibling, Rihanna told Extra at the July 13 Smurfs premiere in Los Angeles. Whether a little brother or sister, “God knows best, right?” she added. “And I love my boys.”
And through it all she and A$AP have been standing side by side. Read on to see the couple’s sweet love story in photos:
In 2012, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky performed their hit “Cockiness” at the MTV Video Music Awards, and their number was so good it deserved a trophy. This wouldn’t be the last time the two shared the stage as they went on tour together in 2013.
Fans had this song on replay after Rihanna and A$AP Rocky released the music video for “Fashion Killa” in 2013.
As the years went on, they remained friends. In 2018, they attended the Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2019 show as part of Paris Fashion Week and, of course, they totally slayed.
They also attended The Fashion Awards in 2019, with Rihanna dazzling in a mint Fenty dress and A$AP Rocky looking sharp in a black suit.
Met Gala official! Rihanna and A$AP Rocky attended the 2021 Met Gala together in style, with the “Umbrella” singer wearing a black Balenciaga gown and the “A$AP Forever” artist donning a custom ERL quilt and a tuxedo.
After announcing they were expecting their first baby, Rihanna recalled keeping her pregnancy a secret from her friends. “It was harder for me to keep it from my posse, because they’re around me, they know my habits,” she told E!’s Justin Sylvester. “They’re like, ‘You don’t want something to drink? You’re not smoking?’ And I’m eating all the things I’m not used to eating. They know I hate sweets and I’m all of a sudden asking for cookies and donuts. But finally, I just had to let it all out, and they were all shocked, of course, as the world was shocked as well.”
SOS! These photos are so sweet! As Rihanna and A$AP prepared for their bundle of joy, she continued to show her incredible pregnancy style.
While fans wondered if A$AP Rocky had proposed to Rihanna after seeing them sport the words “Marry me?” and “I do” across their teeth in his “D.M.B.” video, sources close to the couple told TMZ in May 2022 the two aren’t engaged.
May 2022
And baby makes three! Multiple outlets report that the couple welcomed a baby in Los Angeles.
She debuted her second pregnancy during the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show.
The pair take the 2023 Met Gala together in honor of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Rihanna accompanied A$AP Rocky during his performance at a Spotify party in Cannes, France.
August 2023
The couple welcomed their second child, son Riot. One month later, they shared their first photos as a family of four in a rare photoshoot.
April 2024
Rihanna confirmed her romance with A$AP began at the end of 2019.
“I’ve seen him in relationships. He’s seen me in relationships,” she explained in a conversation for Interview published April 9. “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.”
May 2025
Baby No. 3! Shortly before arriving to the 2025 Met Gala, the “Love on the Brain” singer confirmed her pregnancy.
Source: www.eonline.com