Key Takeaways

• Joey BADASS addressed a viral video of Serayah crying, explaining it was a private disagreement caught in public.
• The couple has shared personal milestones, including becoming parents and getting engaged in 2024, since the viral moment.
• Joey emphasized the importance of authenticity and growth in their relationship beyond public perception.

Joey BADASS and Serayah go through growing pains like everyone else while juggling life and relationships. But unlike their fans, the lovebirds have had to endure scrutiny and rumors whenever their private moments become headline fodder.

Such was the case a year ago when the paparazzi caught the “What Is Love” singer and “Lonely At The Top” rapper in the throes of an emotional conversation in Los Angeles. At one point, Serayah was observed wiping tears from her face, leaving ample room for people to speculate about her love life. During a recent appearance on the “Funky Friday with Cam Newton” podcast, the Brooklyn-bred artist confronted the topic head-on.

Reflecting on the incident, he explained, “When I [saw] that, I was pretty, you know, let down. And then it’s, like, people jump to [their] conclusions, like, oh, they [were] probably arguing because of this [and] because of that. I didn’t see nobody get it right. Not a single person.” What photographers caught was a candid moment between two people who just happened to be celebrities.

“We were just going through the motions. That’s it. It was authentic,” Joey told Newton. “It was inevitable, and, you know, we’ve grown so much since then… It was really just a matter of she’s going through things, I’m going through things, and we get into a disagreement, and it’s just a clash… It just happened to have happened on Sunset Boulevard, where somebody caught it and put it f**king out there for the world to see,” he added.

The duo hard-launched their romance in 2023, two years after they met at a party. This past February, they welcomed their first child, a son, and two months later, the Ruth & Boaz actress revealed their engagement in a photo carousel appropriately captioned “life lately dump.”

Joey Badass and Serayah’s relationship represents unity

In this era of #RelationshipGoals and #CoupleGoals, Joey is not sure he wants his and Serayah’s love story to be included. “It makes me cringe a little bit because it’s like, what is the goal for people? Is it the optics?” he pondered. Furthermore, the entertainer noted, “In the container, it’s just me and my lady… We are having our own evolutions and stuff in private. So, it’s like, what is the goal really? ... Like, let’s not get caught up in what it looks like… Let’s get caught up in the growth that it inspires as individuals and then collectively together. I think that’s the goal.”

However, there is one caveat: “If my situation is goals to somebody out there, what I want the goal to be is not what it looks like or what it may be perceived to feel like, but the purpose of it is important as Black families that we stick together and we build together because that is, I believe, the key to our success as a community.”

The couple gets that nobody wins when the family feuds, and as their relationship continues to evolve, they’re showing that love, growth and unity still matter, even under the spotlight.