For a public figure raised inside a hip-hop dynasty, Angela Simmons has spent two decades learning that the pressure multiplies — and privacy isn’t a given.
The daughter of RUN DMC’s Rev Run has embarked on her own journey in the music industry after releasing her spoken word song.
It was a personal choice to step out on her own, just as it was her choice to keep something so sacred to her temple private.
The entrepreneur and reality star sat down with Shannon Sharpe for the June 24 episode of “Club Shay Shay,” where nothing was off the table.
Simmons opened up about her complicated history with Bow Wow and the devastating loss of her son’s father, Sutton Tennyson.
She revealed that one decision was rooted in an experience from her teenage years.
She recalled her father, Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons of Run-DMC, sitting her and her sister Vanessa down for a serious talk.
“I hold my Dad in a very, very high regard,” Simmons shared. Soon after, a sermon at church sealed it.
“And then, one day, I remember going to church and they were discussing all these things about waiting for marriage, and I was like, ‘You know what, I’mma wait,’” she said.
“It went from my dad telling me to hearing it in church, and then I was like, ‘I’m just gonna wait until I meet the right person for marriage,’” she continued. “Then, time kept ticking, and then I was like, ‘Dang, I’m 28. This is crazy.’”
She’d previously addressed the timeline shift on “The Real.”
“Well you know what, I had a plan,” Simmons said in 2018. “The plan didn’t work out. And you can’t always plan everything. You know, I met the love of my life and we got engaged. And I waited until 28.”
That love was Sutton Tennyson. Simmons and Tennyson welcomed a son together before tragedy struck. The boy’s father was shot and killed outside his home in 2018.
Tennyson’s friend Michael Williams was later sentenced to life in prison for the killing. When the verdict came down, Simmons posted on her Instagram Stories: “Justice served today! We got you! We got him.”
Reflecting now, Simmons says removing sex from the equation reshaped how she dated.
“I felt confident with my decision. I think that it happened for a reason. I got to openly, freely date, knowing that I’m not doing that, too,” she said. “I got to really know people. I think it teaches you how to really get to know somebody without that on the table.”
Fans flooded the show’s Instagram clip’s comments with everything from praise to skepticism.
“It’s definitely possible. yall all just fast asf,” one wrote. “Props to her impossible to find these days,” said another.
Others were harsher.
One person wrote, “Maaan, get Bow Wow on the phone. Ion trust that sh-t.” Another follower snapped, “Irrelevant.. what’s her body count now?”
“Ain’t nobody finna believe dat fairy tale ah shii CAP,” someone else declared.
One follower defended her: “Y’all call anyone with morals corny. It’s sad.” And the sentiment about waiting resurfaced once more: “Good for her i wish i would’ve waited longer, i was 21.”
Someone pointed to her rapper dad, “What dad wouldn’t want his daughter to wait? Really what mom wouldn’t. #SheKnewSheWasThePrize.”
Simmons’ dating résumé during and after her virginity includes actors, rappers, athletes, and other nepo babies.
She and Bow Wow were in an on-again, off-again teenage romance after meeting in their teenage years. Their union was chronicled on Run’s House and reportedly buckled under the weight of her pledge of celibacy.
Still, they survived as friends through a 2012 proposal, a 2014 reunion attempt, and even a 2019 marriage pact.
Another alleged ex, Romeo Miller, hovered around Simmons for years. Fans wanted the friendship to become romance, even while filming “Growing Up Hip-Hop.” But it never happened.
Simmons later revealed their fallout after Miller failed to show up for her following the death of her son’s father, Tennyson.
“To me he didn’t step up at all,” she said back then. “I don’t expect nobody to do nothing for me; that’s fine, but he didn’t step up.”
Tennyson became the man she finally let in, but his death left a wound she’s never hidden.
After splitting from Tennyson in late 2017, Angela Simmons was linked to NFL linebacker Khalil Mack, music producer London on da Track, and Keri Hilson’s ex Serge Ibaka.
In August 2020, she confirmed her relationship with champion boxer Daniel Jacobs, but the romance ended months later.
That same year, she was also rumored to be involved with NBA player Serge Ibaka, though his longtime girlfriend Keri Hilson’s presence at their joint birthday celebration cast doubt on the speculation.
In August 2020, she went public with professional boxer Daniel Jacobs, sharing affectionate photos before the relationship quietly ended months later.
Yo Gotti, who first rapped about wanting her in 2015’s “Down in the DM,” eventually got his shot. The two went public on New Year’s Eve 2023. They split in June 2025, parting, she says, on mutual respect.
Through it all, Simmons has stayed remarkably open about a journey most people would keep private.
Her decision to wait wasn’t about performing purity for an audience — it was personal, shaped by faith and family, and it held even as the timeline shifted. And at 38, Simmons isn’t asking anyone to follow her path. She’s simply showing that hers was hard-won, and how she came out the other side still standing.
