Justin Bieber once asked Rihanna out as a teen but her response crushed him: "I just went in..."
Justin Bieber's relationship with Rihanna took a turn after his appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show. In September 2011, a teenager, Justin Bieber, appeared on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show.' During the episode, DeGeneres asked Bieber, "Did you ask Rihanna out? Is that true?" In his response, Bieber said, "It did happen. Yes, I asked her out." Shortly after, DeGeneres inquired, "How old is Rihanna? Like 20 or something?" At that time, Bieber smiled and quipped, "I don't know. I just went in. I just went in."
Then, the veteran talk show host and the studio audience broke into laughter. Following that, DeGeneres jokingly remarked, "Sometimes, you just got to go in and what did Rihanna say?" to which the 'Baby' hitmaker replied, "Umm, I mean I'm not dating her, so." Shortly afterward, DeGeneres chimed in, "Ok. So you'll be friendly with her." Meanwhile, Bieber quipped, "Yes, I will be friendly, maybe in a few years." Thereafter, DeGeneres said, "You're going to wait for a little while till you kind of maybe she'll date you later," to which Bieber retorted, "Yeah, maybe."
In February 2011, Bieber got the chance to sit next to Rihanna at a Los Angeles NBA All-Star game. At that point, Bieber was only 16 years old; meanwhile, Rihanna was 23 years old. As per Yahoo, Bieber asked Rihanna for her number during the basketball game; however, he ended up getting rejected by his celebrity crush. Later on, down the lane, Bieber shared his side of the story on his Instagram page. In December 2015, Bieber shared a photograph of himself and Rihanna on his Instagram page. "'Can I have your number?' -Justin 'Nah' -Rihanna," Bieber wrote in the caption of the Instagram post.
Bieber asked Rihanna out on a date in 2011. However, this whole thing saw the light of day when he was reportedly dating Selena Gomez. As per People magazine, Gomez and Bieber started dating in 2010. In the next two years, the air was filled with rumors about Bieber and Rihanna. Back in the day, a close pal of Gomez and Bieber's shed light on the entire situation and told Life & Style, “It has devastated her. It really cut like a knife because it happened in February of 2011, when Selena and Justin had been dating for months and were falling in love. It’s caused Selena to question their entire relationship. Selena thinks maybe they’ve been hooking up all along."
Around the same time, Page Six reported that a source close to Rihanna shared that all the speculations surrounding her alleged romance with Bieber were false. During a 2016 interview with Capital FM at V Festival, Bieber stated that he would love to collaborate with Rihanna someday. Speaking of his chat with Rihanna at an event, Bieber shared, "We talked a little bit; I told her how much I liked her new song 'Needed Me.'. We haven't done a song together; [we should] for sure."
