Inside Amber Rose's Relationship With Wiz Khalifa

For several years, Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa were one of the hottest couples in the hip-hop world — or anywhere, for that matter. From the time they started dating in 2011 until their divorce in 2014, their high-flying relationship attracted plenty of attention. And it's no wonder — according to MTV News, they made no secret of their attraction to each other, sharing their blossoming romance openly in the media and during public appearances. And at first, the brash, outspoken model and entrepreneur Rose and rising rapper Khalifa seemed to be a match made in heaven — they didn't hold back from getting mushy when talking about each other. "That's my baby," Rose told Us Weekly about Khalifa. "He is my little angel. I love him." And Khalifa returned the sentiment. "She just gives me the world and I can't ask for no more than that," he told the magazine.

Alas, their bliss was short-lived. By 2014 — after a year of marriage and a son together — the couple filed for divorce, according to the BBC. But while their romance didn't last, their fondness for each other did. As Rose told the Daily Beast, she and Khalifa are "the best of friends." So their relationship had a happy ending after all, but not without its share of twists, turns, and seriously bumpy spots.

Twitter is known as a great place to watch celebrities say things they'll later regret. And as Amber Rose knows from experience, it's also a place where minor grievances and old hurts can get blown way out of proportion. Her Twitter feuds with the Kardashians and her ex-beau Kanye West earned her serious notoriety, according to Cosmopolitan. And Rose regrets none of it, since all the drama sent her social media following through the roof. "I went from 1.2 million [Instagram followers] to 5.5 million in a couple months," she told Cosmopolitan.

But if you look hard enough, you can find treasure as well as trash talk on Twitter: It was through Twitter that Rose discovered that Wiz Khalifa had been admiring her from afar. "He did an interview about me and the guy who interviewed him asked, 'If there was one girl in the world who would you be with?'" she told Us Weekly. "He said 'Amber Rose,' — and then I hit him on Twitter, and I said, 'That's really cute' and we fell in love!"

In most historically traditional couples, the guys are often older while the women are younger. Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa are certainly an exception to this convention — she's four years older than he is, as noted by Us Weekly. This was no doubt a non-issue for Rose, who's outspoken about her desire to live life on her own terms. "I can't sit around and stress anymore about the Internet and what people say about me," she told Cosmopolitan. "I just gotta do me.'"

But Khalifa suggested in an interview with Playboy that even this relatively small age difference — on top of his youth when their relationship started — may have contributed to the collapse of their marriage. "I'd been present in the relationship, but at that age and with what was going on, it just wasn't right for me. It helps to walk away sometimes, even though it was super hard," he said. Later in the same interview, when asked if he'd marry again, he confirmed he had a lot of growing up to do before he'd be ready to settle down again. "I feel like I'll probably get married again when I'm in my 50s," he told Playboy.

When Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa got engaged, they knew that having a family together was very much on the table, according to Us Weekly. "He wants 12 kids!" Rose told the magazine, to which Khalifa replied, "I was just playing. I don't want 12." But both were serious about wanting to have kids — so much so they didn't wait until they were married. As reported by People, their son, Sebastian ("Bash") Taylor Thomaz ("Thomaz" being Khalifa's legal surname), was born February 21, 2013 — three months before their wedding. "Everyone welcome this perfect young man into the world," Khalifa posted on Twitter on the day of his son's birth.

Little Sebastian's arrival was no surprise to close followers of Rose and Khalifa, who'd been proudly sharing the progress of Rose's pregnancy from the start. According to People, Rose first publicly announced her pregnancy at the MTV Video Music Awards the previous September, and shortly before his son's birth, Khalifa posted a picture of himself in a hospital mask and scrubs.

Most parents report their lives changing radically after the birth of their first child. But celebrities and others with hefty budgets can avoid much of the stress of new parenthood by outsourcing the heavy lifting to nannies. Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa, however, took their new mission as parents seriously — so seriously that, as Khalifa told Playboy, his desire to do right by their son caused some friction in their marriage. "My main goal is to raise my son how I want," he said. "I'm a control freak, and not being able to control that was weird. I didn't know how to deal with it and didn't understand that feeling."

Rose likewise shapes her life around her son's schedule and needs. She told Cosmopolitan that because she gets up at 6:30 a.m. to make him breakfast every day, her nightlife — apart from occasional lucrative paid club appearances — is pretty limited. And she's more than willing to go the extra mile to broadcast her commitment to her kids (she later had a second son from another relationship). As Us Weekly reported in 2020, she had their names boldly tattooed onto her forehead.

When Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa got engaged, they weren't sure what kind of wedding they wanted — but a major priority was ensuring both of their families would be there. "As long as all of our families are there, that's all that matters," Rose told Us Weekly.

Unfortunately, not all of Rose's relatives wanted to celebrate with them. According to ET, she hinted that some of her older relatives refused to attend her wedding with Khalifa because they disapproved of her marrying a Black man. This was especially galling for Rose, who herself is multiracial (according to the website for her company Rose & Ono, her mother is Cape Verdean and her father is of Irish and Italian descent). "I'm angry that my family is like that and they want to pass so bad that they raise my mom and my uncles and my aunts to not fully know their culture," she told ET. She added though that her younger relatives are more open-minded. "Our younger generation, we've embraced it so much," she told ET. "And I feel like that's why my father is white."

Unfortunately, Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa's wedding proved to be the beginning of the end of their relationship. As their marriage deteriorated, rumors of infidelity began to fly, according to TMZ. After she signed with NCredible Entertainment, a talent management company run by Nick Cannon, whispers circulated that Rose and Cannon had become romantically involved. Further fueling the rumor mill was the fact that, at that time, Cannon was dealing with his own relationship drama — his messy divorce from Mariah Carey, as noted by Billboard.

But Rose vigorously denied the accusations of infidelity, and instead accused Khalifa of being the unfaithful one in their relationship. "Please stop with the fake stories, I would never cheat on my husband in a million years," she wrote on Twitter (per Billboard). "I think u guys know this." She continued in a subsequent tweet, "Unfortunately my now ex husband can't say the same."

TMZ reported that people close to Khalifa seemed to confirm Rose's accusations, saying that he had indeed slept with another woman. However, it was said that Khalifa and Rose were separated by that time and the rapper felt their marriage was already over.

As the fractures widened in their marriage, Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa decided to call it quits for good, with Rose filing for divorce only a year after their wedding, according to TMZ. According to a source close to the couple, their rollercoaster of a romance simply moved too fast for their comfort. "They cared very much for each other but it all happened so fast between having the baby and getting married. They really did not know each other as much as they should have before getting married," the source told E! Online. Despite the accusations of infidelity that plagued their marriage, no mention of them was made in the divorce papers, which only cited "irreconcilable differences," reported TMZ.

In her divorce petition, Rose asked for full custody of their son, who was only a year old of the time, while allowing Khalifa visitation rights. E! Online also reported that the couple had a prenuptial agreement in place that included spousal support for Rose.

When Amber Rose filed for divorce from Wiz Khalifa and demanded full legal and physical custody of Sebastian, their 1-year-old son, Khalifa wasn't about to let go without a fight. According to E! Online, he filed a legal response to Rose's divorce petition in which he requested joint custody of their son. And he brought plenty of ammunition to the battle: According to TMZ, in the days leading up to the filing of his legal papers, he'd compiled a long list of accusations alleging Rose was an unfit mother. He accused her of frequently staying out late, spending just 15 minutes with their son each morning before taking off for her own activities, and engaging in loud, obscenity-laced arguments with her mother in front of their son, which Khalifa claimed were upsetting to him.

Thankfully, however, Rose and Khalifa ultimately decided that their son's well-being was more important than their egos. According to TMZ, Khalifa was the first to extend an olive branch, asking Rose to listen to the lyrics of his song "See You Again," which went, in part, "How could we not talk about family when family's all that we got? / Everything I went through you were standing there by my side / And now you gonna be with me for the last ride." Moved by his sentiments, Rose relented, and the two agreed to joint custody of their son, according to the Mirror.

Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa may have had any number of well-publicized disagreements over the course of their relationship, but one thing they can agree on is that their son, Sebastian, is their top priority. Even after both Rose and Khalifa moved on to other relationships, they stayed in close contact to ensure little Sebastian always had their support. "We've always been really good at co-parenting," Rose told Us Weekly. "It's not about your feelings, it's not about what they're doing in their personal life, it's about the kids. Wiz and I, we talked about that very early on."

And Rose has found that sometimes being a good co-parent means cheering on her former partner. As the Daily Mail reported, in September 2021, she and Sebastian were spotted backstage at one of Khalifa's concerts. In a series of Instagram Stories, she showed 8-year-old Sebastian enjoying quality time with his father in an impromptu performance with him onstage.

Divorce almost always triggers complicated emotions, and when the papers are signed and the drama is officially over, there are any number of ways to honor the occasion — burning one's marriage license, or perhaps a good cry on a close friend's shoulder. But at the end of the heavily publicized, conflict-filled feud that was their divorce, Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa — who, by that time, had made peace with each other and with the end of their marriage — chose a unique way to cap off their marriage, according to People: by spending a night at a strip club. "Too much fun with my Ex hubby last night & no we didn't celebrate our divorce we celebrated our love 4 each other cuz that never goes away," Rose posted on Twitter the next day.

Months later, Rose still found herself having to explain her night out with her ex. "We would never celebrate our divorce," Rose told the Daily Beast. "We mourned it. It was a very difficult time. Wiz literally just called me and said, 'I'm gonna take my baby mama out. I love you, you're my best friend, so let's go spend some money on some strippers.'" As a former stripper herself, Rose was all in — and made sure Khalifa was ready to invest some serious cash in her former peers. "I'm a former dancer so I need to throw some money. So we went and we just had the time of our lives," she told the Daily Beast.

Contentious as their divorce was, Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa never lost their deep affection for each other — once they buried the hatchet, it was buried for good, and they remained best friends. "Wiz will always be my best friend, forever — we're best friends," Rose told People shortly after their divorce. "It's kind of weird, because it's like we're almost better divorced, you know?" Their friendship has also been an important part of their lives as parents, and she told the Daily Beast that "family days for Sebastian" are a priority for them. "Our son is the happiest when we're together," she said. "We can't be together in a marriage, but we can be there for our son and that's what we do."

Khalifa too has publicly praised his ex — and is happy to do so with very little prompting. As reported by Rap-Up, when challenged on a 2018 radio show to create a rap about her, he didn't hesitate and rapped the lines, "I don't want no drama / Why you gotta bring up my baby mama," adding, "I still love her, she love me too / You think imma talk about her, you're through."

Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa may be have discovered that marriage was not for them, but as Khalifa told Playboy, it was a good ride while it lasted. "It was cool; it was fun," he said. He also added that marriage was an intense learning experience that forced him to grow up fast. "I learned a lot. Things that would've taken me much longer to learn, I learned in a short period of time," he explained. These things no doubt included parenting as well navigating life as half of a celebrity couple, which brought its own challenges, especially as rumors of trouble in their relationship began to circulate. "Suddenly everyone has advice," he recalled. "I'm a private dude, so I only talk to my family and the people next to me. I don't trust anybody with information, so I would never tell a rapper how I really felt."

As fondly as he remembers the high points of their marriage — and as fond as he remains of Rose — he told Playboy that he now realizes leaving was the right thing to do. "I feel like not being in that relationship helped me out a lot," he said.

Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa learned there's something thrilling — and a bit dangerous — about rushing headlong into a passionate love affair. Within a period of a just few short years, their rollercoaster of a relationship shot from dating to parenthood to marriage and divorce before finally settling into a solid friendship. It left them with a lot of memories (both good and bad) but also with a lot of room for second-guessing.

Rose, for one, suspected that their marriage would have worked out had they waited until they were a bit older to settle down for good. "I feel like that we just rushed into marriage because we were so deeply in love, and we kind of had a rough patch in our marriage," she said in an interview with Bethenny Frankel for SiriusXM's "B Real With Bethenny" (per Us Weekly). "I feel like if we just stayed in just a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship longer, we could have worked it out and then got married later," she continued. 

She also told Frankel that she's not ruling out a possible reunion with Khalifa — but if it does happen, it won't be anytime soon. Rather, she thinks her ex should date around and focus on his career. She noted, "If God wants us together, we will be together."