Rihanna is late and EJ has to wait…again

Rihanna, the unbothered queen that she is, found herself at the centre of some Paris Fashion Week drama with EJ Johnson over the weekend. It all went down after EJ, child of  basketball legend Magic Johnson and former castmate on Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, called Rihanna out on Instagram for being the reason the Christian Dior runway show started an hour late.

“We just left the Dior show. Getting out of there was crazy, but the show itself was beautiful. It did start an hour late because Rihanna was late. We didn’t care to wait for her, but the show was beautiful nonetheless,” EJ says in the video.

Now, I’ll give EJ credit where credit is due, this really is some Housewives level shade. Because it’s said so flippantly. It’s subtle, almost, but it’s still very obvious that they’re being shady. Like no one needs to hear about your disdain for having to wait for the very type of celebrity these shows tend to center around. But unfortunately for EJ, when you direct shade to Rihanna, of all people, nothing is too subtle to not make headlines. And with her fanbase, they had to have known that it wouldn’t end well for them.

People on social media wasted no time roasting EJ – and not even just for coming for the queen. But for not…looking the part, let’s just say. Comments on their video ranged from saying they looked like they could star in a Tyler Perry movie called Madea Takes Paris, while others urged them to get a glam team. Some said they looked like a flight attendant, like they were dressed for Halloween and that they think they’re Naomi Campbell. Simply put, it wasn’t pretty. Mind you, these are the comments on their page. Don’t even get me started on what was being said about EJ in the blogs.

Beyond the chaos of the comment section though, I just don’t think EJ was prepared for what would happen later, when they were turned away from entering their hotel after striking some poses for the paparazzi. This set the stage for a perfect, one word response to their earlier shade from Rihanna, herself, who saw the video of EJ being turned away and simply wrote “Damn.” Yikes.

In the video, moments before EJ gets denied access, you can hear the paps hyping them up and asking for photos. Then, EJ saunters over to the entryway of their hotel amidst a crowd. But things become increasingly tense and awkward as EJ realizes that they are not being granted access into their hotel, and seemingly without explanation, too. It almost makes you wonder if the two events are connected, or if this was just an unfortunate coincidence.

I think this is the perfect example of why it’s so imperative to know who you can and cannot come for. And respectfully, I just don’t view EJ as someone who is even remotely part of any league that holds enough rank to come for or criticize, in any way, one of the richest and most famous Black women in the world. And this is not to say that someone is better or more worthy just because they’re more famous or because they have more money, but it is to say that one of the fastest ways to lose a fight, like before it even begins, is fighting outside your weight class. And that’s exactly what they did here.

I also think it’s a tell. It’s ironic to me that EJ has been vlogging their whole experience at Paris Fashion Week, very much with an air of wanting to let their poor peasant followers experience a piece of the action. Their whole demeanour in vlogging has almost been that they’re doing us a favour by allowing us access to this exclusive thing we’ll likely never experience. But if it’s such a run of the mill thing for them, why are they even surprised that Rihanna was late? Rihanna being late is pretty much a guarantee – like life, death and taxes. But also, if the organizers of the show were willing to wait an entire extra hour for Rihanna, and those same organizers invited EJ, what could possibly be the benefit of this complaint?