Saturday Night Live is taking all necessary precautions amidst the rising cases of COVID in the United States. Sadly, that includes pulling Roddy Rich from the show’s Jan. 15 line-up after he was exposed to the virus. A rep for Roddy Rich confirmed that the artist had to cancel his performance on the upcoming episode due to someone on his team being exposed to COVID. Jack Antonoff’s band, Bleachers, will step in as a replacement.
So far, it has not been confirmed whether or not Roddy will return for another chance at performing on the SNL stage. The rapper first made a splash on the hip-hop scene in Jan. 2020 with his viral song “The Box,” which led to major performances, including one at Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty Fashion Show and at the 2020 BET Awards. Learn more about Roddy below:
Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr., the man who would become Roddy Ricch grew up in Compton, California. He started rapping as a youth and began his career as a teen. “I bought some equipment, and then I started recording real heavy, in my room, when I was like 16,” he told XXL in 2018. “I was just playin’ with it.” That hobby led to him putting out his first mixtape, Feed Tha Streets, in 2017. The sequel, Feed Tha Streets II, would be his breakthrough. A single from it, “Die Young,” released in July 2018, blew up online, eventually going double Platinum.
Following “Die Young,” it seems that everything Roddy touched turned to Platinum. He had a run of singles – “Every Season,” “Project Dreams,” “Start wit Me,” “The Box,” and “High Fashion” (featuring his fellow Savage X Fenty performer, Mustard) – that were successful hits.
“My best friend died in a high-speed chase. Before he went to jail, he told me, ‘Roddy, chase the bag, do what you gotta do, put this before anything.’ I looked up to him, ’cause he was getting money before me. It’s more about chasing it, for me,” Roddy told XXL. “I don’t really be putting no limitations or projections on myself. I just go do it.”
Roddy released his debut studio album, Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial, on Dec. 6, 2019. It premiered at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spent the next two months hovering near the top of the chart. It would take the No. 1 spot for the fourth time in mid-February, before slowly sliding down. As of October 2020, ten months after its release, it’s at No. 32. The album won the 2020 BET Award for Album of the Year and will likely be a contender in the 2021 Grammy Awards. He’s already a Grammy winner, picking up Best Rap Performance for “Racks In The Middle” during the 2020 ceremony.
Roddy will likely end 2020 with the title of “Most Weeks Spent At The Top Of The Billboard Hot 100.” His single “The Box” dominated the first three months of 2020, occupying the No. 1 spot for eleven weeks, from Jan. 18 to March 28. From there, the No. 1 spot was a revolving door, with The Weeknd, Drake, Doja Cat, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga all taking the crown. Roddy returned the No. 1 position as a featured artist on DaBaby’s “Rockstar.” The track spent five weeks at the top, giving Roddy 16 total weeks of being No. 1 this year.
Roddy became a father for the first time in 2020 when his girlfriend Allie Minati gave birth to their son. She announced the happy news in a now-deleted Instagram post in April of that year, writing, “Baby boy is Here.” In the photo, a beaming Roddy cradled his newborn son and smiled as he gazed at him.
Roddy Rich is not married, but he was in a longtime relationship with Allie Minati before they had a son together in 2020. Roddy and Allie kept their relationship off of social media until they announced the birth of their baby boy. Even after their son’s birth, Allie and Roddy have been very private about their relationship, to the point where fans are constantly wondering whether or not they’re even still together.
Being low-key and private is something that Roddy has done every since he first rose to fame, though. “I don’t really partake in the celebrity aspect of it all,” Roddy said to GQ in January 2020. “I don’t go to parties, I don’t hang out, I don’t really talk to nobody. I don’t really consider myself a celebrity. When the world catches me outside, then it’s like, ‘Oh s***, it’s Roddy!’ I’m cool about it, as long as my personal space isn’t threatened. It’s funny, I’m not a celebrity, I guess I’m just known.”
“I used to be like Michael Jordan in high school, no cap,” he told XXL in 2018. “[I was a] point guard. I was more like an Allen Iverson type of n—a, I ain’t gon lie. Jordan was a dunking type of n—a. I was more like that cross-a-n—a-up, breaking-his-ankles type situation.”