Nelly has proudly declared that changing diapers is women’s business — or at least no business of his — as if he’s not capable of being an energetic, functioning modern dad in the year 2025.
The rapper, 50, made the stinker of an admission on We Belong Together, the new reality show he and wife Ashanti, 44, are starring in. The couple, who got back together in 2023 after first dating from 2003 to 2013, share son Kareem Kenkaide (known as KK), now 11 months — but maybe share is the wrong word, since it sounds like Ashanti is doing all the heavy lifting here.
“I’ma take you back to this conversation we had before you kicked me under the table,” Nelly told his unimpressed wife after they discussed the fact that he was about to head off on tour without them. “I said, ‘Baby, I’ll give you the world. I just ain’t changing no diaper.’”
“I ain’t going to even lie,” Nelly went on to say. “You know, I ain’t got nothing for him.” Oh yes, for many new moms there comes a moment when you realize that weaponized incompetence is very real, and that many men — not all men, of course NOT ALL MEN! — still think that taking care of their own child is “babysitting.”
Dads not changing diapers in 2025 is not a flex, if it ever was. Women aren’t born knowing how to change diapers, we have to learn it too — and quite often while our insides are falling out, our breasts are throbbing like fiery balls of milky fury and we haven’t slept in three days. Guess what guys, women get tired too! And women don’t love poop! But we know the mess and the eyebags and the chaos are a crucial part of caring for the person you love the most in the world — your baby. As one fan put it on X: “She waited all these years to have a baby by a teenager!” while another referred to the singer as a “married single mom.”
Later in the episode, the “Hot In Herre” star (you know what’s hot? Fresh 3am diapers), is seen bragging to his friends that he’s told Ashanti it’s all on her. “Until he can say, ‘I’m hungry,’ until he can say, ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ it’s gonna be a lot in your lap,” he regales them. “But as soon as he start walking, I told her I said, ‘Enjoy.’ Cause as soon as he get to walking and talking, he with the crew.”
Unusually for a professional musician with a string of global hits behind him and three Grammys, we learned that Nelly also seems to suffer from an ailment that takes down many new dads: selective hearing. “Do y’all really be up at night?” he asks Ashanti. “I’m blessed with the tune-out.” Ashanti quite rightly declares this “absolutely ridiculous.”
And here’s the thing: Ashanti doesn’t seem like the trad wife type. We don’t think she’s cooking up jam in a milkmaid dress while Nelly’s on the road. She’s a confident modern woman who’s had (and still having) her own success in the entertainment business. And hey, having your first baby in your 40s is no joke: she’ll be grappling with a mixture of gratitude at being blessed with a healthy son by the soulmate who got away, and total, all-consuming tiredness.
It could be that this is a lethal combination: is she too happy, or just too exhausted to complain? “I’m just trying to be a better father than I had,” Nelly told People last month, adding that Ashanti was nailing motherhood. “I wish all mothers could see the way she get down a little bit,” he said. “You wish every kid had that type of love.”
Or maybe she’s playing the long game. Maybe her girlfriends have told her to just deal with the diapers and the sleepless nights, because they’ll be over in the blink of an eye, and that’s when parenting gets really challenging. Yup, around about the time Nelly says KK can join his “crew” is when Ashanti should say “Bye babe! I’m going on vacation with the girls!” and leave him to it, knowing that, like all good parents, he has a supply of Band Aids on hand.
So really, when Ashanti said “I’m split about this tour. My first response is I’m super happy for him for putting it together. The wife and mommy side of me is like, ‘F—!’” The wife side of me and mommy side of me is a little sad. You know, Daddy’s gonna be gone for a long time,” maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. She can hunker down for a few months, watching Gilmore Girls with a cute, calm baby in her arms, safe in the knowledge that when that baby turns into a toddler, Nelly will be all over it.
Because there are actually a few things that are worse to deal with than late night diapers that we’re thinking Nelly is planning to lead on (right?): potty training, childcare costs, vomiting bugs taking whole kindergartens down, head lice, organizing birthday parties, awkward conversations with parents you have nothing in common with about how their kid bit your kid, getting your kid to put their shoes on, getting your kid to put down the iPad, telling your kid they can’t have Fortnite, being confronted by a teacher who wants to know why your kid asked another kid if they wanted to “Ride wit me,” puberty, underage drinking, college fees, getting roasted by your kid on TikTok because you wore your socks the wrong way. Yes, there’s a lot of fun in store, — hopefully while Ashanti gets her nails done.
Even Robert DeNiro, 81 — that’s right, more than 30 years older than Nelly — knows that dads need to step up too. He revealed in 2023 that he didn’t change his youngest daughter Gia’s diapers, but was also at pains to emphasize that he was a hands-on parent in many other ways.
In Nelly’s defence — look, we quite like the guy’s music so we’ve got to be nice here — he has done some serious parenting in his time. KK isn’t his first child: he has four more: daughter Chanelle, born in 1994, son Cornell, born in 1999, both with his ex Channetta Valentine, plus he did a truly amazing thing by adopting his sister Jackie Donahue’s kids, Shawn and Sydney, when she tragically died of leukemia in 2005.
In 2021, he spoke to People about fatherhood. “It wasn’t like I was Superman,” he said. “Obviously, Nelly wasn’t there every day, but whatever needed to be done, I was definitely there. I didn’t miss graduations, I showed up for sporting events and whatever I could and a lot of times, I had to be the disciplinarian.” He added: “As bad as I felt and whatever I was going through, I can’t imagine what they [Sydney and Shawn] were going through. It’s one of those situations that you don’t think about, it has to happen, that’s what family does.”
We guess we’ll know how Ashanti really feels about all this when we see what happens next. In February, she told the Today show that she wasn’t done with having babies. “I definitely want more kids, but maybe not right this second,” she said, adding that KK is her “best friend.” She said: “He’s like the sweetest little angel baby. He just laughs and smiles all day. I couldn’t even imagine my life without him now. I’m so happy.”
If she’s happy, then we guess it’s all good — for now. Just as long as she’s googling luxury adults only vacation destinations while she does all those night feeds, with Nelly obliviously sleeping beside her …
