He continued, in a more gentlemanly fashion, “Rihanna is what I want to be, as far as having a big core following. She’s very successful. She’s been doing it for years. Think about it. ‘Pon de Replay’….So ’05, ’06, ’07, ’08, ’09, ’10, ’11, ’12…. She’s got seven years in this s–t. Shout-outs to that young lady, and hopefully, with the grace of God, seven years from now, I can say the same.”
Rihanna coolly disentangled herself in the blink of an eye at the VMAs, but everyone wanted to ask A$AP about that moment, wanting to know whether it was planned or spontaneous—and whether she was OK with it. “I got like this cocky holy ghost that came into me,” he explained to Hot 97’s Angie Martinez. “We had fun, we had a great time and I thank her for that. I doubt I could get that close if she didn’t want me to do something like that.”
Or…not.
“He grabbed my ass on stage. That was not part of the rehearsal!” Rihanna told Vogue last spring. “I was like, What are you doing?!” But she remembered her manager quipping that she must like him at least a little, because she didn’t give him hell for his impertinence.
