After months of keeping her firstborn child out of the spotlight, Rihanna surprised fans by sharing personal photos with Hollywood Unlocked over the weekend. She even posted a sweet video of her baby on TikTok — her first ever post on the platform. But don’t expect this to become a regular thing.
This social media debut comes over six months after Rihanna welcomed her baby boy with A$AP Rocky in May. In fact, the couple has seemingly worked hard to keep their child out of the spotlight. Even as A$AP Rocky and Rihanna have done public appearances, they’ve remained tight-lipped about their son, though A$AP did tease that more details on their family would be “coming soon” in a recent interview with Complex. As for Rihanna, the most she’s said about her bundle of joy was at her Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 show, where she told People, “He is funny, he’s happy — and he’s fat.” (Photos confirm: the rolls are strong with this one.)
Whatever they were doing to keep their baby away from the press and rabid fans has clearly been working. So why release photos now? According to Hollywood Unlocked’s Jason Lee, Rihanna made the decision to release photos of her child after paparazzi succeeded in getting “unauthorized photos” of the baby and “planned to release them.” He explained the situation on Twitter, adding, “She wanted BLACK MEDIA to be the one to do it since she wasn’t going to be given the choice.” (Soon after the photos went live, the first paparazzi photos of the baby surfaced on TMZ.)
Rihanna further took back control of her son’s image, sharing a bit more of her son in her first TikTok video. Captioned “hacked,” the cut clip shows the baby smiling while riding in his car seat, trying to get a hold of “Mommy’s phone.” Rihanna can be heard laughing in the background as her baby tries desperately to gnaw on her device.
The video has been viewed over 13 million times and has 4 million likes. Let this be a lesson: never underestimate Rihanna’s ability to beat the paparazzi at their own game. And maybe don’t take paparazzi shots of children.
