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Seven years have passed since pop music icon, fashionista turned billionaire Rihanna performed on a stage. However, that dry spell ended when RiRi performed on the biggest stage of her life in Phoenix, Arizona for the NFL’s Super Bowl 2023 Halftime Show. The night’s biggest reveal, Rihanna’s baby bump. That’s right, the superstar is pregnant.
The Barbados beauty made history by becoming the first pregnant person to give a halftime performance. Rihanna opened her pro bono show, as is tradition for super bowl performers, on floating translucent stage meters above the State Farm Stadium field with “Bitch Better Have My Money,” followed with “Where Have You Been,” “Only Girl (In the World),” “We Found Love,” “Rude Boy,” “Work,” “Wild Thoughts,” “Pour It Up,” “Umbrella,” “Diamonds,” and more.
Her red outfit by Irish designer Jonathan Anderson easily revealed her baby bump, leaving all those who were watching to speculate if she was pregnant with her second child or still carrying baby weight after she gave birth to her first child with A$AP Rocky last May of 2022. There had been no public announcements prior to her performance.
After the electrifying 13-minute performance, Rihanna confirmed on Instagram to her fans and spectators that she is expecting baby number two.
Not only did Rihanna give a hell of a performance, the visual artistry of the choreography and outfits also made the presentation mesmerizing. Synchronized, the dancers performed on their own floating stages around Rihanna. A “V” shape, a diagonal line, and a line of clear platforms formed throughout the performance.
Her dancers were dressed in all-white Savage X Fenty Pin-Up Low-Impact Sports Bras, Savage X Cotton Boxers, & Mesh Tanks with sunglasses, which only brought out her passion-red attire during her super bowl halftime show. In the end, Rihanna ascended into the sky on her own platform.
Rihanna previously turned down an opportunity to be a performer in a super bowl halftime show as an act of solidarity for former NFL player Colin Kaepernick who was seemingly blackballed for taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in protest of Black men being killed by the police. “I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler,” the superstar told Vouge in 2019.
However, Hip Hop mogul Jay Z, owner of Roc Nation, where Rihanna is signed, entered a partnership in 2019 to help the NFL’s social justice efforts.
Rihanna, more comfortable with the idea, told reporters, “The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world, so as scary as that was because I haven’t been on stage in seven years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all. It’s important for me to do this year. It’s important for representation. It’s important for my son to see that.”