Vanessa Simmons recently revealed why she waited until she was 28 to lose her virginity.
Speaking on Shannon Sharpe‘s Club Shay Shay, Simmons said she was in her late teens when she, her sister Vanessa, and their father Joseph “Rev Reun Simmons asked them “to hold out, to wait.”
“I hold my Dad in a very, very high regard,” Simmons said. She also said that a church visit convinced her to practice abstinence.
“And then, one day, I remember going to church, and they were discussing all these things about waiting for marriage,” Simmons recalled. “And I was like, ‘You know what, I’mma wait.”
“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.’”
Eventually, Simmons lost her virginity to then-fiancé Sutton Tennyson. They also welcomed a child. Tragically, Tennyson was killed in November 2018 when he was fatally shot outside his home in Atlanta, Georgia, following an argument. He was 37 years old.
In an interview on The Real, Simmons shared how her plans changed.
“Well you know what, I had a plan,” she told the show’s hosts. “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.”
Also, Simmons embarked on a bold creative pivot by launching her music career under the name Angela Renée. She’s set to introduce a full project that blends spoken-word artistry with hip-hop. The project is arriving through the iconic Ruff Ryders label and is produced by Hitmaka.
Her debut single “Run To,” which features vocals from singer Résa and a verse from rap legend Jadakiss.