Nelly and Ashanti Reveal the Marriage Rule That Keeps Their Rekindled Romance Going Strong (Exclusive)
"You definitely want to listen, definitely want to hear people," Nelly tells PEOPLE
The pair stars on Peacock's new reality series, Nelly and Ashanti: We Belong TogetherNelly and Ashanti know what makes their marriage work.
The spouses, who share 1-year-old son KK, are chronicling their rekindled relationship on Peacock's new reality show Nelly and Ashanti: We Belong Together, streaming now, and getting candid about what keeps their romance going strong more than 20 years after they first met.
"Just try to do the right thing with one another, man," Nelly tells PEOPLE.
The "Hot in Herre" rapper and Ashanti first met and began dating in 2003, broke up a decade later and spent another decade apart before reuniting in September 2023 and quietly marrying three months later. They welcomed KK, whose full name is Kareem Kenkaide Hayes, in July 2024.
Nelly says of their dynamic, "You definitely want to listen, definitely want to hear people. I think if you can bear it down to the facts, sometimes the facts may not be in your favor. And that's a hard thing to find a foundation about."
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He continues, "It is like, 'Yo, okay, well, this is not making me look good.' But I'm willing to say, 'You're right about that, but this is how that made me feel.' And you got to be able to take the good with the bad in that conversation."
Ashanti agrees. "Communication is extremely important, especially with us traveling," says the "Foolish" musician. "Sometimes, he's on the other side of the world. And sometimes, I'm on the other side of the world. So, communicating is really important."
Looking back on the first round of their relationship in the 2000s, Ashanti recognizes they needed "time" to come back to one another.
"You grow. It's about the good outweighing the bad," explains Nelly. "What you thought mattered a lot, once you go through other scenarios, you realize that's not really as big of a deal as you thought it would be."
He adds, "Or you get something that you thought you was missing, and it still doesn't compensate or fill a void, and you're like, 'Damn, I thought that would mean more,' but that doesn't. It's just growth."
Nelly recently dropped a song, "Spin the Block," inspired by his true feelings about finding his way back to Ashanti. "Everybody don't get a chance to, if you could say, take a test drive," he says with a laugh. "It's like when people say, 'You should always test drive a car before you buy it.' I hate to minimize that because this is real life, so you don't want it to feel like that."
Ashanti, chuckling, chimes in, "It's a good metaphor."
Her husband explains, "It's almost the defining factor, we had a chance to test drive a relationship to understand that, 'Yo, that car was the best thing I had riding around that thing, man. Fire it back up, baby.'"
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