Rihanna and A$AP Rocky Release the First Photos of Their Newborn Son, Riot Rose

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky during her second pregnancy — (Image credit: Getty Images)

There he is! Nearly two weeks after we learned the name of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s second son, Riot Rose (five weeks after his birth on August 1), we now know what the adorable little boy looks like—and the photos were worth the wait.

Per People, we see Rihanna and Rocky playing with Riot on a blanket as he sweetly smiles up at his parents; we also see the entire family of four in one shot, with Rihanna holding baby Riot while Rocky carries the couple’s older son, RZA, on his shoulders—the first photo of the family of four. (While Riot is now seven weeks old, RZA is 16 months old.) Another image shows Rihanna photographed carrying Riot alone as she leans up against a car, and a fourth shot shows Riot solo, as cute as can possibly be.

Rihanna revealed her pregnancy with Riot during the opening moments of her Super Bowl halftime performance in February, and a source told People at the time that “she loves being a mom, so this is where her mind is at the moment. She is the happiest she has ever been.” (The happiness radiates in the newly released photos, by the way.)

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“Rihanna and A$AP are great right now,” a source told Entertainment Tonight. “They’re so excited to grow their family and are so united when it comes to parenting. They have so much fun together and are very in love. They already shared a special connection and parenting together has made their bond even stronger.” The outlet said the couple “are each other’s rock,” and Rihanna herself said of their bond, per Access, “It’s amazing to have a friendship, like, be the center of our entire family, and I really love it.”

Riot Rose’s middle name has an especially significant meaning, per Entertainment Tonight: “Not everyone knows this, but Rocky loves flowers—he loves having fresh flowers in the house, he loves decorating with flowers, and he even had real flowers in his grill once.” Roses, the outlet reports, are Rihanna’s favorite flowers, and the multihyphenate may have hinted at her second child’s middle name as far back as the Met Gala on May 1—exactly three months before his birth on August 1. She wore a white Valentino gown covered in large roses to the event, and Rocky might have dropped hints too—in the music video for his song “RIOT” (which we didn’t know at the time was a song title with more meaning than we could imagine), Rocky wore the red plaid skirt he wore to the Met alongside Rihanna, tying together “Riot” and “Rose” for the first time. RZA—born on May 13, 2022—also has a name with significance: he was named after the Wu-Tang cofounder of the same name.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.