Rihanna shares new photo of her son — and the moment she learned she got an Oscar nomination
Rihanna's infant son was by her side when she discovered she'd been nominated for an Oscar — but he won't be tagging along for the event itself.
In a new Instagram post, the singer — who revealed during her Super Bowl Halftime Show performance that she and partner A$AP Rocky are expecting a second baby after welcoming their first son last May — shared a photo of her firstborn.
Noting the little boy's tearful expression, Rihanna captioned the shot, "My son when he found out his sibling is going to the Oscars and not him."
The star has been nominated in the "Best Original Song' category, and will perform her nominated song, "Lift Me Up" from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, at the March 12 ceremony. As the footage in her Instagram post shows, the singer learned of her Oscars nod while watching the live nominations broadcast on her laptop with her 9-month-old baby boy on her lap.
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have not yet shared their son's name publicly, though the baby did recently make his British Vogue debut. Posing with her partner and their baby on the magazine's March cover, the pop star and Fenty founder opened up about motherhood.
"Oh, my God, it's legendary," she said. "It's everything. You really don't remember life before, that's the craziest thing ever. 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."
She also shared how the magazine's beach photo shoot — which caught the attention of photographers — prompted her to preemptively post photos of her son's face for the first time on TikTok.
“I just went straight into protective mode,” she told the magazine of seeing cameras trained on her baby. “Like there wasn’t even time for rage. [Rocky and I] drove up to the trailer area and we sat in the car chatting and working out how we move forward. As parents it just feels so icky, like a violation. ... As we were speaking, we knew they were making calls and deals."
Posting her baby on TikTok, however, undercut those deals, and gave the new mom a sense of control.
"Throw me to the wolves," she said. "Do what you want with me. But he doesn’t have a say in any of this. We’ve been protecting him thus far and you don’t have any consent to be posting photos or selling photos of my child, a minor. Get the hell out of here with that.”