FULL Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige & Kendrick Lamar.
Dr. Dre led a group of his closest colleagues in a joyous, funky, trunk-rattling halftime concert at the Super Bowl on Sunday, bringing hip-hop to the big game for the first time.
Dre joined Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar on the field at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, close to where he grew up in Compton, for a nearly 14-minute spectacle that included some of the biggest rap hits of the last 30 years, but not too soon for the notoriously conservative National Football League. 50 Cent also turned up unannounced to perform his memorable “In Da Club,” which was co-produced by Dre.
The spectacle, which took place in the middle of the Los Angeles Rams’ local championship game versus the Cincinnati Bengals, was a proud celebration of Black Los Angeles from the start, with architectural copies of Tam’s Burgers, Randy’s Donuts, and the Compton courthouse.
Dre and Snoop started the show with “The Next Episode,” with Dre dressed in all black and Snoop in Rams blue, before transitioning into 2Pac’s mid-’90s Dre-produced blockbuster “California Love,” which mentions Watts, Compton, and Inglewood. Dancers danced amid lowriders in a rainbow of colors on the field.
50 Cent began “In Da Club” by hanging upside down before dropping into a faux nightclub filled with gyrating ladies.
Blige took the stage next, performing “Family Affair,” another Dre-produced smash, and “No More Drama,” which she closed with a flourish of growly R&B vocals.
Lamar, widely considered as the major heir to Dre’s West Coast hip-hop heritage, added a touch of his “good child” to “Alright,” his unofficial Black Lives Matter song, which he performed in front of a phalanx of dancers in military formation.
Eminem followed suit during his segment of the fast-paced concert, rapping a few lines from “Forgot About Dre” before going into “Lose Yourself,” his Oscar-winning rely-on-yourself tune, which he performed with a live band that included Anderson Paak plays the drums.
Eminem ended his show by kneeling, a tribute to Colin Kaepernick’s well-publicized NFL protests a couple of years ago.
The six hip-hop heavyweights gathered at SoFi’s 50-yard line to round out the Super Bowl LVI extravaganza with a swaggering run through “Still D.R.E.”
The event was Jay-Roc Z’s Nation’s third halftime show, following the combo of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020 and the Weeknd last year.
When it was revealed, the collaboration raised eyebrows, and it garnered further criticism last month in the wake of an explosive lawsuit brought by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, alleging that he and other Black coaches were subjected to the NFL’s discriminatory hiring procedures. (Around 70% of NFL players are black, but there were only two black head coaches in the league this season.)
