Unpacking August Alsina’s relationship with Zu after their suggestive TikTok goes viral
Myself—his biggest moment in the national spotlight arrived when word got out in 2020 that he’d been having an affair with Jada Pinkett Smith.Excuse us: not an “affair,” but rather an “entanglement”—as Pinkett Smith famously put it.
Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.After meeting the Set It Off actress through her son, Jaden, Alsina and Pinkett Smith were romantically involved during a time when she claims she was separated from her husband, Will Smith. (That Alsina originally claimed Will gave the two “his blessing”—stirring up rumors about the A-list couple’s open marriage—is another topic for another time.)At any rate, in the years since, Alsina’s managed to keep people guessing about his love life and his sexuality, especially after his stint on VH1’s reality show The Surreal Life in 2022.Toward the end of the season, the singer credited a then-unidentified man with helping him find “a love that feels limitless.”“What do you know?
Love showed up, but in a new way,” Alsina said to camera in a confessional interview. “I want to share that and really honor the person that I love and that loves me back and teaching me so much about love and healing… It defies all the constructs that one would say love is supposed to be or love should look like.”After the statement, the man in question appeared on screen, sat down next to Alsina, and the two embraced.It sure felt like a coming out in the most public of spaces—or at least a declaration of love for one person in particular—and the media hesitantly covered it as such, though Alsina never confirmed or denied a relationship, or his sexuality.It would be another two years until the singer-songwriter would address his sexuality again, when he appeared as a guest on Nick Cannon’s Counsel Culture podcast in 2024.
