Nelly made sure to wed Ashanti before their baby arrived, preventing her from becoming just a “baby mama.”
Following the birth of their 10-month-old son Kenkaide “KK” Haynes, reports surfaced that the couple had secretly married in 2023. On Monday’s episode of The Bootleg Kev Podcast, the Grammy winner explained his decision to marry Ashanti before she became a first-time mom. He also shared how they reconnected after nearly a decade apart and dating other people.
“I didn’t want it [to be] tense,” Nelly explained around the 4:30 mark about seeing Ashanti at Fat Joe and Ja Rule’s 2021 Verzuz battle. “We didn’t even talk. I just went over, got a hug [to] break the ice. We didn’t talk for another almost eight to nine months to a year. We didn’t have a conversation.”
Nelly explained why he rushed to marry Ashanti before their baby arrived.
When Kev joked about them “hiding a wedding,” Nelly revealed his thinking:
“Once we found out that she was pregnant, I was just like yeah–We hadn’t talked about any of that yet,” he said. “But I was like, ‘Yo, you know what. Let’s just knock this out because we’re gonna be doing so much, and everything’s moving so fast.’ And I didn’t want her to be a baby mama.”
Nelly agreed with Kev about the “right person” and “wrong timing.” “I base any relationship on does this person bring more good to your life than bad,” he explained.
“I think from me and her, after we got a chance to [talk] and was like, ‘Yo a lot of this shit that we was bitching about, we cool. We were way more happier than we thought being pissed off was.”
Baby Kareem is Nelly’s third biological child, alongside his adopted niece and nephew following his sister’s 2005 death. The family might keep growing, with Ashanti recently telling E! News she wants “one or two more” kids.
