From friends to soulmates: Timeline of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s relationship ahead of Super Bowl halftime show

Rihanna is set to make her return to music at the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday 12 February. The event will mark her first live performance in seven years, and her first since welcoming a baby boy with boyfriend A$AP Rocky.

In May 2022, the “Diamonds” singer and the “Praise the Lord” rapper became a family of three with their birth of their son, whose name has yet to be revealed. Last year, the couple announced they were expecting their first child together with a chic New York City photoshoot, where Rihanna was seen proudly debuting her baby bump in a long pink unbuttoned jacket.

The announcement came as a sweet surprise for Rihanna and A$AP Rocky fans, who have been following the couple since they first got together in November 2020. While the pair have been an item for more than two years, the couple has sparked romance rumours throughout the last decade.

Here’s a complete timeline of Rihanna and ASAP Rocky’s relationship.

Before the pair got together, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky worked together on multiple collaborations. In 2011, Rihanna released a remix of her song “Cockiness (I Love It)” featuring A$AP Rocky, which appears on her album, Talk That Talk. The two performed the song at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2012. A year later, Rihanna enlisted the rapper to open for her on the Diamonds World Tour.

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky were romantically linked in 2019 when they posed together on the red carpet at the British Fashion Awards. Rihanna even documented the event on Instagram, where she thanked A$AP Rocky for supporting her Fenty brand.

“And thank you @asaprocky for representing us on the carpet and always being so supportive of @Fenty !!” she captioned the post.

In 2020, Rihanna split from her boyfriend of three years, Hassan Jameel. Almost immediately, rumours swirled that A$AP Rocky and the singer were dating.

Speculation began after a source reported to The Sun that the two shared a hotel suite during a trip to New York. “However, Rihanna is reluctant to put a label on it as it’s so soon after Hassan,” the source said. Reports at the time also said that it was just casual between the two and the newly-single Rihanna was just having fun. That July, she featured A$AP Rocky in her Fenty Skin campaign, and the duo talked skincare to Vogue.

However, by December 2020, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky were reportedly “inseparable,” with an insider telling People that the couple had become inseparable since confirming their relationship in November 2020. "It’s a new relationship, but they both seem very into it,” the source said. Things reportedly became more serious in Barbados, where the couple spent Christmas together and A$AP reportedly met Rihanna’s family.

In May 2021, A$AP Rocky opened up about his relationship with Rihanna profile for GQ, in which he called her the love of his life and “the one”.

“She amounts to probably, like, a million of the other ones,” the rapper said. A$AP Rocky also revealed that the two went on a second tour together, only this time it was a road trip. The couple commandeered a massive tour bus and drove from LA to NYC, stopping in Texas, Tennessee, and a few national parks.

A$AP Rocky even predicted his future when he talked about fatherhood. “I think I’d be an incredible, remarkably, overall amazing dad,” he told GQ. “I would have a very fly child. Very.”

The two hit the Met Gala red carpet together in September 2021, marking their red carpet debut as a couple. Rihanna – the queen of the Met Gala – wore a black ruffle dress from Balenciaga while her beau dressed in a red, yellow, blue, green and floral patterned blanket by ERL designer Eli Russell Linnetz.

After making their pregnancy announcement, the two made a number of red carpet appearances showcasing Rihanna’s growing baby bump. Last year, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky attended Milan Fashion Week, where they sat front row at Gucci’s Fall 2022 show.

The rapper also supported his girlfriend at a party to celebrate her beauty brand, Fenty. Rihanna posed for photographs in a green, sequin backless top that hung over her stomach as she embraced A$AP Rocky.

In May that year, the two sparked engagement rumours when the Harlem-born rapper released a music video for his single “DMB”, which contained snippets of what appeared to be a wedding ceremony. In one clip, Rocky is seen wearing gold grills emblazoned with the question, “Marry Me?” The camera then cuts to Rihanna, showing off her own grills with the phrase, “I Do.”

However, Rihanna laughed off the engagement rumours to paparazzi after she was spotted wearing a diamond ring on her left ring finger. “This old ring? You act like you ain’t never seen this ring,” the 34-year-old singer said.

Things took a turn for the couple last spring when there was speculation A$AP Rocky had cheated on Rihanna with shoe designer Amina Muaddi. In April 2022, fashion influencer and writer Louis Pisano tweeted that Rihanna and A$AP have “split” and alleged that the latter was “caught cheating”.

“Amina was responsible for designing Fenty’s footwear offering and Rihanna is often seen in custom shoes from her own label,” he added. Days later, Mauddi broke her silence and maintained that the rumour was an “unfounded lie” and should “not be taken seriously.”

Pisano subsequently apologised for spreading the rumour, tweeting: “Last night I made a dumb decision to tweet some information I had received. I’m not going to talk about sources, blame others for a discussion that was started, etc because at the end of the day I made the decision to draft that tweet, press send and put that out with my name on it.”

Still, the couple remained strong. In a cover story for Vogue published that same month, Rihanna opened up about her relationship with A$AP Rocky. She said he was in the “friend zone” for years prior to them dating and their relationship only became more serious over the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I just feel like I can do any part of life by his side,” she told Vogue. “People don’t get out of the friend zone very easily with me. 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.”

The singer said she eventually let her guard down with A$AP Rocky and over time spent together during coronavirus lockdowns, he “became her family”. Rihanna revealed that she cooked for them during their cross-country road trip with a “janky grill from Walmart”, and Rocky would tie-dye T-shirts.

“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.”

As for what she loves most about their relationship, Rihanna said: “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.”

Throughout the last ten years, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s relationship has grown from “will they, won’t they” to “the one”.