A Timeline of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s Years-Long Romance

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky are the definition of friends-turned-lovers, and their years-long romance has been sweet to witness. The pair have been together since November 2020, but fans had been obsessed with the idea of them being a couple long before then.

The Savage X Fenty creator and rapper started out as longtime friends, working together as musical collaborators in the early 2010s, but they weren’t romantically linked until almost a decade later. However, over the past two years, their relationship has taken quite a turn after the two became first-time parents and welcomed their first child together, a son, in May 2022. A year later in August 2023, it was reported that the pair welcomed their second child together, though no other details have been revealed.

In her May 2022 Vogue cover story, Rihanna joked about her friendship-turned-romance with Rocky and said, “People don’t get out of the friend zone very easily with me,” adding, “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.” Case in point: the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards when Rocky joined Rihanna onstage for a performance of her single “Cockiness” — a moment in which he also playfully grabbed her backside in front of the entire world.

“That was not part of the rehearsal!” Rihanna exclaimed to Vogue. “I was like, ‘What are you doing!?’ My manager was like, Oh, God, she must like this guy a little bit. She never lets this sh*t slide.” Turns out, Rihanna liked Rocky a whole lot, because, in the same interview, she also said, “I just feel like I can do any part of life by his side.”

Let’s take a look back at Rihanna and Rocky’s romantic journey over the years.