Super Bowl-mere miles from Compton, as the world looked on-laid bare the amplitude of their generational impact on American culture. The fact that the club of the day was an L.A. Even now, a couple more decades on, when Snoop says, “when they bang this in the club, baby, you got to get up,” we listen.

A Wes Anderson-like row of visual “moments” included in the set evoked the finer points of the Compton aesthetic-custom Cadillacs, famed night club Eve After Dark, Tam’s Burgers on West Rosecrans, the Martin Luther King memorial-while a dimly glowing street map of the city stretched out across the field.ĭre and Snoop opened things up with “The Next Episode”, one of several seminal tracks from 1999’s The Chronic 2001 that had defiantly demonstrated that these artists were still at the top of their game a decade on from their initial explosion in fame.

No, this wouldn’t fix the league, but it was a perfect opportunity for a culture with both global implications and fundamentally Black roots to have its long-deserved moment in the sun.Īn elaborate stage set sprawled out below Dre, who arose behind a chic, white studio recording console, the platform from which he launched his empire. county that birthed a new music universe-aligned poetically for this year’s Halftime Show. These artists, these times, and this game-played minutes away from Compton, the small city in L.A. Even today, new controversies continue find the league in problematic water despite the fact that the vast majority of its players are Black. Signing on with Jay-Z‘s Roc Nation as a Super Bowl Halftime Show production partner has helped bridge some of the social gap in recent years, but the echoes of Colin Kaepernick‘s on-field activism and unceremonious blacklisting still linger. The NFL has also, quite famously, had a long list of issues with its handling of sensitive racial topics. Still, the NFL has largely shied away from hip-hop for the Super Bowl, occasionally including rappers in the festivities but never featuring them as the showcased act. Rap and hip-hop-and, more specifically, the G-Funk style Dre helped pioneer-has had an undeniable influence on popular music and culture for more than thirty years. The group of hip-hop icons welcomed a variety of special guests during the NFL championship game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, which saw the Los Angeles Rams defeat the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20.Įver since the announcement back in October and the ensuing trailer in mid-January, this Halftime Show has been poised for poignant significance. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar hosted one of the most highly anticipated Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show performances of all time on Sunday night.

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