Joey Badass says he’s left polyamory behind after committing to his now-fiancée, actress Serayah.
The “Still” rapper opened up about his decision to embrace monogamy during the October 24 episode of Cam Newton’s Funky Friday podcast, just a few months after proposing to Serayah. The couple welcomed their first child, a baby boy, in June, while Joey is also a father to a daughter from a previous relationship.
Around the nine-minute mark of the episode, Joey explained that his decision to return to monogamy “wasn’t forced” and “came with maturation.”
“Prior to this relationship, I was in a previous relationship on and off with my high school sweetheart and everything,” he shared, referring to his daughter’s mother. “So that gave me a certain type of experience. And by the time that ended, I was like, Okay, cool. I spent a lot of time of my life trying to make this thing work. Now I’m at a point in my life where it’s like, Maybe I need to try this other thing.”
For Joey, polyamory once felt like the better option. “That’s when the polyamory idea came into place like, You know what? I fuck with you and you—and y’all should know that,” he recalled, explaining that honesty was at the core of his decision.
“I want to be 100. I want to be truthful,” Joey said. “But then what I realized from that in hindsight, there [was] a certain part of me that was not satisfied. I was unfulfilled. And I think I was using that—of what I wasn’t feeling for myself—and I was trying to use that to find in other people.”
Two years ago, Joey mentioned he had been drawn to polyamory for “quite some time.”
“I feel like more people are into poly than they realize,” he said then. “It’s just that people tend to keep things private, which is cool, but it could lead to not being transparent with your partners.”
Another artist embracing a polyamorous lifestyle is R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, who has emphasized the importance of honesty in his relationships following several breakups, including his highly publicized divorce.
“So after my divorce, my very public, very ugly divorce, I realized that just through being dishonest, I hurt a lot of people,” he shared on the Joe and Jada podcast earlier this month. “So from that moment, I was like, ‘I’mma just keep it a buck with everybody about everything—be it good, bad, ugly, whatever. I’mma keep it a buck.’”
