A$AP Rocky on Fatherhood, Falling For Rihanna & His New Album, Don’t Be Dumb

When A$AP Rocky walks into New York’s Mercer Hotel one July evening for his W photo shoot, he is impossible to miss. He’s wearing sunglasses, a green terry Lacoste robe paired with a thick gold chain that he “got on Canal Street,” and a platinum grill on his molars. An enormous golden bauble on his finger brings to mind a line from his new single, “Highjack”: “Bitch mistake my newest pinky ring for a ice pack.” Slip-on leather mules and a green custom Goyard tote complete the look. “You guys really gotta wish me luck today,” he says in a low voice, a boyish glint in his eye. “I heard the photographer lady is crazy.”

The “photographer lady” is none other than Rihanna, Rocky’s partner and the mother of their two children, Rza, 2, and Riot, 1. The couple first met in 2012, stayed friends, and didn’t actually begin their relationship until seven years later, setting the Internet on fire. Here was Rihanna saying in interviews: I want to become a mother. And here came the “Fashion Killa” himself, ready to take on the mantle of her forever partner. In the music video for Rocky’s 2022 track “D.M.B.,” he wore a golden grill shaped into the words “Marry Me?” Rihanna’s, in glittering diamonds, read “I Do.”

Rocky, who is 35 and was born Rakim Mayers in Harlem, burst onto the rap scene in the mid-aughts with his A$AP Mob crew. Two of his albums, 2013’s Long. Live. A$AP and 2015’s At. Long. Last. A$AP, went No. 1 on the Billboard charts. His fashion sense—kilts, leather jeans, backward snapback hats—proved to be just as era-defining as his music. More recently, he has been hard at work on his latest album, Don’t Be Dumb—his first full-length feature since Rza and Riot came along, and since 2018’s Testing. “I’ve been working so hard, night and day, it don’t even feel real,” says Rocky. Fatherhood has had an impact on his outlook on the world, his schedule, and even what kind of music he finds inspiring. “That shit changed my swag,” he says, while his hair is being braided into artful swirls in a suite at the Mercer. “I’m such a dad, it’s fucking hilarious. I haven’t been in the gym in weeks. I come home, my kids are already in bed, asleep. I leave, they still asleep. But the sacrifices we make to put out something substantial…”

Suddenly, a familiar voice rings out from the doorway: “Shut up!” cries Rihanna. She laughs, and he mutters something about her being too much. She greets him with a hug. “Don’t put a mirror in front of that guy,” she advises his hairstylist. “That’s a dangerous fate.”

While Rocky finishes getting dressed, Rihanna jumps into photographer mode. This is the first time she’s shooting someone for a magazine, but the megastar and Fenty Beauty mogul flits around like she’s right at home. She surveys the inspiration boards propped on the walls, taping reference photos she particularly likes onto a light box: Keith Haring shot from above; Kate Moss sitting on a bathroom counter; intimate black and white photos of Angelina Jolie that Brad Pitt snapped for W when they were together. She moves equipment around while testing shots with the director of photography for this story, Jeff Henrikson. “Is he ready?” Rihanna asks about Rocky—a true moment of role reversal for the notoriously tardy star.

Back in the dressing room, stylist Matthew Henson brings Rocky a Louis Vuitton–monogrammed watch case displaying three vintage timepieces. “This is way older!” Rocky says, pointing to the gold Piaget he’s wearing.

“You can have my watch case if we wrap this photo shoot by 1 a.m.,” Henson tells Rocky. “Aight,” Rocky responds, then pauses. “What about 1:30 a.m.?”

At 2:45 a.m., Rihanna is still wielding an SLR with a long-range lens, giving Rocky artistic direction: “Walk through that door! And move your leg this way!” “Wiggle around!” She urges him to show more of his chest and his gold chain, pulling open his shirt. Her baggy, ripped Vetements jeans drag on a wooden box as she stands barefoot on her tippy toes, looking for a better angle. Rocky, meanwhile, is concerned with the music playing, which includes J Dilla, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, and Westside Gunn. “This is very special because this is the first place she fell in love with me,” says Rocky, pointing to the sofa that dominates the room while Rihanna giggles behind him.

Weeks later, Rocky and I are sitting on a stoop across the street from his apartment in Lower Manhattan, and he explains that our shoot marked a full-circle moment for the couple. “Virgil Abloh shot the music video for ‘Fashion Killa’ in 2012, and that was the same couch where Rihanna and I sat in the first scene,” he says. A cone-shaped joint is stationed firmly between his fingers, and his dark sunglasses are on, despite the fact that it is nearing 11 p.m. “That was that same room.”

That video—for one of his first singles and most popular songs—was released about a year after Rihanna had Rocky jump on the remix for her song “Cockiness (Love It),” and just before the two put on a steamy performance at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards that culminated with the rapper grabbing Rihanna’s derriere for a live televised audience. But as Rocky tells it, he took interest in the pop star well before then. “It’s a lot of history between us,” he says, explaining how they first crossed paths. “I was kicked out of this nightclub. They wasn’t giving me no access to it. This is when I’m just starting out, so nobody knows me. I was with Matthew Williams and Virgil. I was getting into it with the bouncers, and she came out. We just locked eyes. She didn’t even know us, but she was like, ‘Yo! Why y’all not letting him in? What’s wrong with you?! Let that man in!’ ”

When I ask how he knew Rihanna was the right person to be the mother of his children, he doesn’t miss a beat: “I knew from when we were younger. We both did, I think. So it was only right when we got older. We just kind of reconnected.” That happened around “kind of, sort of 2019, 2020,” says Rocky. Rza arrived in 2022, then Riot in 2023. “I think Rza is going to keep to himself. He’s an introvert,” Rocky continues. “Riot’s an extrovert—he’s just like his mom. Rza is more so like his dad, like me. And he’s my twin. He got his mom’s forehead, but he got everything else from me. I love my boy’s big forehead! I loved it on his mother. Listen to ‘Jukebox Joints.’ ” (He’s referring to this lyric from the 2015 track: “Ain’t nothing better than the pretty, big forehead bitch.”) Rocky shows me a video on his phone of Rza sitting on the floor cuddling with Rihanna, the two of them surrounded by pairs of shoes. “Riot looks up to Rza,” he says. “I think Rza’s warming up to Riot.”

Rocky has, in the past year, been busier than ever with both musical and fashion-related endeavors. He launched a ready-to-wear collection through AWGE—the creative agency he founded—that he debuted during Paris Fashion Week; starred in a Bottega Veneta campaign with his sons; and shot content related to his forthcoming album, which is meant to be out this fall. Because of leaks, music sample clearance hiccups, and what Rocky calls “the politics,” he’s been forced to push the release date of Don’t Be Dumb more than once. Still, the first single off the record has left rabid fans wanting more. “Highjack” features the singer Jessica Pratt and a gaggle of children rapping the catchy hook “I don’t like that!”

Don’t Be Dumb sees Rocky experimenting with his sound more than ever. “If you take indie, mix it with classical, mix it with vintage Memphis meets Dipset meets Wu-Tang, that’s where I grab a lot of inspiration from,” he says. That swirl of influences—which also includes silent films from 1930s Germany and bands like Portishead (the rapper has been listening to them a lot lately)—can be clearly felt on the track “Hood Happy,” which features Busta Rhymes, Flavor Flav, Slick Rick, Fatman Scoop, and Morrissey. Of course, his musings on fatherhood make their way onto the record as well, but Rocky is not sure he’d call this album more personal than his past works.

“I’m more concerned with the new introduction to my fans,” he says. “They changed. I changed. We changed. And you got to get familiar with yourself first and then start to introduce it to others. I don’t have a song purely dedicated to fatherhood. I do have songs where I’m talking about my life, and fatherhood is one of the things that I bring up, though—adapting to changes and having a work-family balance. It’s been quite the roller coaster figuring out what songs I like and what songs I got tired of quick. If I get tired of a song in three months or six months, maybe the fans will too.” He takes the same approach to fashion. “You got to stay ahead of yourself,” he says of creating the AWGE collection (he’s working on a second one at the moment). “The hardest thing to do is dictate what’s going to be lit in six to nine months.”

Rocky takes a look at the butt of his joint and suggests we go upstairs to his apartment. His hairstylist and nail artist have been sitting across the street while we chat. We all troop into the elevator together, then step into his brightly colored loft. Rocky and his personal assistant—a 22-year-old named Marco from Verona, Italy, who says he listened only to A$AP Rocky growing up—root around in the kitchen. “I made you a cheese plate,” Rocky says to me, pointing to a silver platter with triangular slices of soft Brie, crumbly pieces of white cheddar, a handful of blueberries, miniature pots of honey, and Castelvetrano olives. The utensils on the table, however, clearly belong to younger members of the household: massive bright-green plastic knives and forks with big handles and soft edges. “Kids like primary colors,” the rapper notes, sitting at the dining room table, a stack of multicolored Louis Vuitton trunks stretching to the ceiling behind him.

“You gotta pardon my house,” he says as we walk to an outdoor roof deck. “It’s a little messy at the moment.” Before settling onto a lounge chair, he closes the door, shutting out with a soft thud the jazz mix floating from a wall-mounted television. Jazz, he explains, is the core of his musical diet. He ticks off Bill Evans (“sick-ass pianist”) as a favorite, as well as Thelonious Monk and Alice Coltrane. “Jazz is hip-hop,” he says. “Jazz is Harlem.” He makes a point of frequenting the small jazz bars and clubs scattered around New York City. “I don’t fuck with the concert thing because it becomes too much of an event. People start filming you and shit,” he says. “When you go to jazz bars, you can actually enjoy and experience it as a human, as opposed to showing up and having to do work as an artist.” He’s also constantly keeping an eye out for new talent. “I fuck with Icytwat and Thottwat,” he says of his latest favorites. “I just discovered this guy called Tell Ya Friends, out of New York; he’s sick as fuck.”

Inevitably, the conversation floats back to family; he stresses again and again how the most important thing of all is his kin. His trip to the Caribbean this past summer—where Rza and Riot got to meet members of their extended clan, and Rihanna and Rocky were photographed gleefully tubing on the ocean by paparazzi—got him thinking about his dad, Adrian Mayers, who passed away in 2012. He, like Rihanna, hailed from Barbados. Rocky didn’t visit his dad’s hometown as a kid but “always heard about it and wanted to go. I really grew up on it, all that shit: the songs, the food, the music, the parties.” He says he felt a familiarity and a sense of home with Rihanna due to her ties to the island. “It was a natural connection,” he says. “All those years that I missed in Barbados, I just started making up for it, getting more in tune with that side of my culture.”

Rocky’s dad and brother were the first people who made him realize he could break the rules. “I don’t know if you call ‘the rules’ the law, but they broke the law a bunch of times,” he says. But his father practiced “principles and morals,” and taught a young Rocky to trust himself—he said doing so would lead to personal and professional freedom. “It’s crazy he told me that,” Rocky says in a low voice. These are messages he’d like to give his own kids. That, plus “a little bit of humility—and cockiness when it’s time. Yin and yang. What I learned is, freedom is key, so I really want to support my boys and hope to be receptive to whoever and whatever they want to be in life.”

It seems poetic that Rocky, like his own father, is now a dad to two sons. “Once you a parent, you just embody that, no matter what,” he says. “I’m so happy that I at least still got one parent. If I didn’t have the support of our [his and Rihanna’s] parents, I don’t know what we would be doing.”

But the most important support is the kind he gets from his “companion, from my woman, from my partner. She knows when to hold it down. I think we both have our niches, our things that we do that we’re good at. She could never be a great dad, because she’s a great mom.” He grins the widest I’ve seen since meeting him, his grill gleaming against the inky night sky. “And I could never be a great mom, because I’m the greatest dad in the whole wide world.”

A$AP Rocky’s hairstyling and braiding by Tashana Miles for Dyson at Exclusive Artists; skin by Michelle Waldron for Dior Beauty; manicure by Sonya Meesh for Deborah Lippmann at Forward Artists. Set design by Spencer Vrooman for SVS. Special thanks to The Mercer Hotel, New York.

Rihanna’s hair by Naphia for Fenty Beauty; makeup by Raoul Alejandre at CLM.

Produced by 138 Productions; Executive Producer: Simon Malivindi; Line Producer: Hye-Young Shim; Production Managers: Francis McKenzie, Miles Soboleski; Production Coordinator: Sean Kim; Photo Director to Rihanna: Jen O Hill; Lighting Director: Eduardo Silva; Photography assistants: Storm Harper, Brandyn Liu; Digital Technician: Kiri Wawatai; Lab: PictureHouse + Small Darkroom; Retouching: Dtouch CREATIVE; Fashion assistants: Tori López, Hannah Atira; Production assistants: Jackie Bendeth, Isaac Taylor-Young, Tate O Hill; Assistant to Tashana Miles: Natasha Brewster; Assistant to Naphia: Sadja Latta; Set assistants: Justin Helmkamp, Charlie Turner; Tailor: Coco Lee.