After hell of his gun assault trial, will A$AP Rocky and Rihanna celebrate the rapper being cleared by tying the knot?

FOR almost three years pop star Rihanna has faced the “hell” of knowing the father of her two children could end up in jail until he was 60. But after rapper A$AP Rocky was found not guilty of a gun assault on Wednesday, the couple are now planning to get hitched, according to insiders.

Umbrella singer Rihanna, 37, was tearful after the jury delivered the verdict in a Los Angeles courtroom. She was pregnant with the couple’s oldest son RZA when her partner was arrested in April 2022 for allegedly shooting at his childhood pal A$AP Relli.

A$AP Rocky, 36 — real name Rakim Mayers — had a reputation as a bad boy before seemingly settling down with the billionaire singer and ­businesswoman in 2020. He dealt drugs as a child, called his ex Rita Ora a “bitch” in a rap song, described himself as a “sex addict” and spent time in a Swedish jail in 2019 for assaulting a man.

But Rocky always denied firing a semi-automatic weapon at Relli, real name Terell Ephron, in November 2021. And determined to clear his name, he turned down an offer to spend just 180 days in jail in return for a guilty plea. Rihanna has stood by him throughout the ordeal, even bringing their two sons, RZA, two, and Riot, one, to the trial.

The couple have kept the status of their relationship a closely guarded secret — so much so that even their lawyer did not know if they had tied the knot. But it was confirmed during the three-week court case that they are not man and wife. A source told The Sun: “Without doubt she was petrified that it could have gone the other way, with him winding up in jail.

“And as unthinkable as that scenario may have been, it remained a horrific possibility that played on her mind right until the moment he was cleared. “Right now they’re basking in the relief and looking forward to a new chapter, which will almost certainly include a wedding.”.

Born in Harlem, New York, Rakim had a “blissful” child-hood until he was 12 and his father Duke was jailed for dealing drugs. As a result, the family lost their home and his mum had to bring up her kids in a homeless shelter. Rakim then started selling drugs, but the dangers of that lifestyle became all too clear when his older brother Ricky was shot dead by a gangster.

He told The Sun in 2013: “He’d been extorting money and someone wasn’t happy. Bang, he was dead. Just like that.”. The loss of his brother led Rakim to start taking school and rapping more seriously. Four years after Ricky’s death he became part of a rap collective in New York called the A$AP Mob, which he had been invited to join by his then friend A$AP Relli.

He had known Relli since they studied together at New York’s Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities. A$AP Rocky went on to release his first single in 2011 and a year later he supported Rihanna on tour. The rapper, who is said to have dated Rita Ora in 2012, was first romantically linked to Barbadian singer Rihanna in 2013.

But she had been in on-off relationships with Canadian rapper Drake and singer Chris Brown during this point of her life. It was not until May 2021 that A$AP confirmed that he and Rihanna were an item and told GQ mag that she was the “the love of my life”.

By this time he was a huge star in his own right, having got to No1 in the US album charts in 2013 with Long.Live.A$AP and in 2015 with At.Long.Last.A$AP. Big names lined up to work with him, including Rod Stewart who sang on one of his records, the denim brand Guess, Puma trainers and Gucci aftershave.

But he has struggled to shake off his reputation for being a troublemaker. In July 2012, he was arrested after getting into a fight with a couple of photographers and in July 2019 he was locked up in Stockholm after assaulting a man called Mustafa Jafari, who was 19 at the time.

When the Swedish authorities held A$AP in custody until the court case a month later, US ­President Donald Trump reportedly threatened trade restrictions against the Scandinavian country unless the star was released. In August of that year, A$AP was convicted of assault and given a suspended prison sentence.

Two years later he was accused of pulling a firearm on A$AP Relli in LA. The pair had fallen out, with Relli having reportedly become jealous of his old friend’s success. Relli claimed that Rocky had asked him to meet at a location in central Hollywood “to discuss a disagreement between the two of them”.

In court, he alleged that the rapper had shot at him several times, with a couple of bullets grazing the knuckles of his left hand. If A$AP Rocky had been found guilty he faced a maximum of 24 years behind bars. Our source told us: “Rihanna never wavered from her ­support, for a second, but it’s open knowledge she went through hell in the lead-up to this trial.

"The investigation dragged on for almost three years. "It’s been like this storm cloud hanging over them and took a major toll on her stress levels as well as his. “Keep in mind she was pregnant when he got arrested, then the case really intensified throughout her second pregnancy and when she next gave birth.