Rihanna has made her first appearance at the Los Angeles trial of her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky, with whom she has two toddlers.
The singer sat out of view of the courtroom’s cameras, next to Rocky’s mother and sister in the downtown Los Angeles criminal courthouse Wednesday morning. Security brought her into the courtroom surreptitiously to avoid crowds.
Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Athelston Mayer, has been standing trial on two felony charges that he fired a handgun at a former friend, known as A$AP Relli, who testified Wednesday about the moment Rocky allegedly fired a gun at him on a Hollywood street in 2021.
“I was hit. Or I was grazed. I didn’t have a hole or nothing,” Relli, whose real name is Terell Ephron, told jurors.
The trial’s key witness said he grabbed one of their mutual friends who were with Rocky after the first shot was fired and stood behind him for protection. He said he did not see Rocky fire the second shot, and Rocky ran away moments later.
Relli then testified he was walking after Rocky and shouting at him when Rocky turned around and fired. Rocky had lifted the gun up and aimed downward, Relli said.
Jurors asked about Rihanna
When jurors were being selected, prosecutors asked them whether Rihanna’s connection to the case, especially if she appeared in court, would affect their ability to deliver a guilty verdict.
Nearly all those questioned had heard of her — far more than had heard of Rocky — and some described themselves as fans, but all said they felt it would not affect their decisions.
Rocky could get up to 24 years in prison if he’s convicted of two felony counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm. His lawyer says the shots he fired were blanks from a starter pistol that he carried as a prop.
Earlier in the trial, which began on Jan. 21, Relli said he and Rocky, members of A$AP, a crew of creators at a New York high school, had been close, but their relationship eroded after Rocky became famous.
‘I told him to use it’
Relli told the court their relationship had been strained for years and was getting worse in the days leading up to the incident, but he was still “furious” when Rocky pulled a gun on him after a scuffle that began the moment the two met up near the W Hotel.
“I told him to use it. Because mentally I couldn’t believe it,” Relli testified, with his old friend staring at him intently from the defence table. “I physically could not believe there was a gun in my face. That was the breaking point for me.”
He said he had expected to argue, but also to reconcile with Rocky, and the last thing he wanted to do was to get into a fight that could ruin the modest music management business he had built.
“He’s famous,” Relli said. “I’m nobody.”
Raised in Harlem, Rocky’s rapping became a phenomenon in New York in 2011. He had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013. The second one, in 2015, did the same.
Rapper nominated for Grammy
The rapper is set to have a big year as a multimedia star. This Sunday, he’s nominated for a Grammy Award for best music video for his song Tailor Swif. The awards ceremony will be held at the Crypto.com Arena just three kilometres from the Los Angeles courthouse where his trial is taking place.
He’s also set to headline the Rolling Loud Music Festival, star opposite Denzel Washington in a film directed by Spike Lee and co-chair the Met Gala in May.
But the prospect of a conviction and the possibility of lengthy prison sentence casts a shadow over all of it.
Rocky and Rihanna, both 36, have two young sons together.
The singer and the rapper, who are both fashion moguls, first became close when he provided a verse to her 2012 song Cockiness (Love It) and they performed it at the MTV Video Music Awards. They became a couple in 2020.
