Rihanna Reflects on A$AP Rocky Grabbing Her Butt at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have a beautiful family of four that could be growing in the years to come. However, none of that may have happened if they hadn’t performed together at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards.
RiRi sat down with her former stylist and Interview Editor-in-Chief Mel Ottenberg for a cover feature of the mag that arrived on Tuesday (April 9). During their chat, Rihanna reflected on performing “Cockiness (Love It)” with A$AP Rocky at the VMAs, and recalled him grabbing her butt while on stage.
“He grabbed my a– … So when he grabbed my a– that night, everybody thought I was about to … My team was worried that I wanted to have his head on a f–king mantle,” she said, recalling that her team was nervous she was ready to have him wiped off the face of the earth.
However, Rihanna wasn’t even angry, and her inner circle realized at that moment she may have had a crush on the rapper.
“But I was like, ‘Ah, nah.’ That’s why everybody was like, ‘Oh my god. She likes him,'” the Fenty mogul added.
Rihanna would go on to star in the Virgil Abloh-directed video for Rocky’s “Fashion Killa” hit in 2013. But wasn’t until late 2019 that the two musicians would reconnect with an eye toward building a future together as a couple.
“We saw fashion the same. We saw creative the same,” she explained. “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 shit, he would show up to my launches.”
Rihanna continued: “We’ve known each other for a long time. I’ve seen him in relationships. He’s seen me in relationships. 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.”
Their relationship got turned up several notches with the quarantines brought along by the COVID-19 pandemic. Rihanna gave birth to their first child, RZA, in May 2022, and the little boy’s baby brother, Riot Rose Mayers, was born in August.
See Rihanna’s Interview cover below:
Michael Saponara
Billboard
