Just days after announcing her second pregnancy during her halftime performance at the Super Bowl, Rihanna is gracing the cover of British Vogue’s March issue.
The cover story is titled “How a Megastar Became a Mother.”
The cover showcases the nine-time Grammy winner alongside her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky, and their 9-month-old son. You can’t see a baby bump at all in the photos.
When chatting with the magazine, she touched on motherhood and how it’s been.
“Oh, my God, it’s legendary,” she explained. “It’s everything. You really don’t remember life before, that’s the craziest thing ever,” she continued.
“You literally try to remember it – and there are photos of my life before – but the feeling, the desires, the things that you enjoy, everything, you just don’t identify with it because you don’t even allow yourself mentally to get that far because it doesn’t matter.”
The “Diamonds” singer called the birth of her first child “beautiful” and that she felt “blessed.” She then went into detail on how the first days were like with the newborn.
“Essentially, from one person I became two. You walk into the hospital as a couple and leave as a family of three. It’s nuts. And oh, my gosh, those first days are insane. You don’t sleep. At all. Not even if you wanted to. We came home, cold turkey, and had no one. It was just us as parents and our baby. Man, you’re a zombie for the most part.”
So far, the couple hasn’t revealed their firstborn’s name, but she did reveal that he’s a daddy’s boy.
“I’m literally the girl trying to get into the boys club, waiting for my turn. He is obsessed with his father. And I’m like: ‘Didn’t I give birth to you? What is going on?’” she laughed. “Their connection is undeniable. The second Rocky makes eye contact with him, he is on fire. The whole thing they say about sons and moms, it’s a myth. Sons and fathers is crazy. I realized that the validation that you really need as a boy is from your father.”
Rihanna then explained why she decided to perform at the Super Bowl years after turning down the NFL’s invitation in support of Colin Kaepernick. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback famously took a knee during the National Anthem as a stance against racial injustice and police brutality.
“There’s still a lot of mending to be done in my eyes,” she explained now “but it’s powerful to break those doors, and have representation at such a high, high level and a consistent level.”
She then noted last year’s halftime headliners, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J Blige and Kendrick Lamar, were “representing the urban community, globally. It is powerful. It sends a really strong message.”
Motherhood also gave her the strength to give this a try as well.
“It’s this knowing that you can do anything,” she explained, “even things that seem the craziest, like, ‘I’m going to say yes to the Super Bowl in the middle of postpartum?’”
She agreed not knowing she’d be pregnant once again when it was showtime.
“It was almost like an out-of-body experience,” she says of the day it was announced. “I have not been on stage in seven years,” she says. “Seven years! From zero to Super Bowl? That’s mental.”
When it comes to new music, the Fenty Beauty founder hinted that she wants to release some this year and revealed the pressure she’s put on herself after the success of her 2016 album “ANTI.”
“In hindsight, it really is my most brilliant album. I say that because in the moment, I didn’t realize it. But it always felt like the most cohesive album I’ve ever made.”
So, 2023 seems to be the year the star wants to give her so-called navy new music.
“It’d be ridiculous if it’s not this year. But I just want to have fun. I just want to make music and make videos. I need the right background music with the visuals. I can’t just go shoot a video to me talking,” she explained.