Rihanna, who is currently in her third trimester of pregnancy, will soon be welcoming her first child with boyfriend A$AP Rocky. But as she explains in a new interview, it wasn't necessarily love at first sight for her.
During the interview with Vogue published Tuesday, RiRi opened up about their relationship and said she saw him as nothing more than a friend at first.
“People don’t get out of the friend zone very easily with me,” she said. “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.”
Rihanna then recalled the time when she and Rocky performed her hit song "Cockiness (Love It)" onstage at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards and he didn't follow the choreography.
“He grabbed my a-- on stage," she said. "That was not part of the rehearsal!”
“I was like, 'What are you doing!?'” RiRi recalled.
However, she ended up letting it go.
“My manager was like, Oh, God, she must like this guy a little bit. She never lets this s--- slide," Rihanna said.
Fast-forward several years, and the two got close once they started quarantining together during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
“He became my family in that time,” the "We Found Love" singer said.
In 2020, they went on a road trip from Los Angeles to New York and spent time enjoying each other's company. When they would stop the tour bus to take a break, Rihanna would cook food on a "little janky grill" that she bought at Walmart, while Rocky would tie-dye T-shirts he got at a gas station.
“I love the simple things but also the grand adventures,” she said. “There’s no pretentious my-brand-your-brand bulls---, it’s just us living."
“I just feel like I can do any part of life by his side," RiRi added.
The "Diamonds" singer also loved the fact that her mother, Monica Braithwaite, approved of their relationship when the couple later visited her native Barbados.
“My mother has a really good read on people. She observes first and then she’ll move slowly. I guess I’m like that too,” she said. “There are some guys that I’ve dated that she won’t even look at to this day. But she was charmed by him from the jump.”Now that they have a baby on the way, Rihanna and Rocky appear to be more in love with each other than ever before. During her interview with Vogue, Rihanna spoke with Rocky on FaceTime and exchanged “I love yous” with him before they got off the call.
“What I love the most about us?" she asked. "Transparency with everything: how we’re feeling, what our goals are, what our fears and insecurities are. The vulnerability to be able to say what you feel about each other."