🏈🎶 A hip-hop halftime
It’s Super Bowl time! It’s the Cincinnati Bengals vs. the Los Angeles Rams in LA. Who ya got? Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Mary J. Blige will be a part of a star-studded cast of hip-hop artists headlining Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI halftime show. To say I am excited for this game and this halftime show would be a huge understatement. After nearly two weeks of controversy and negative headlines surrounding the recent lawsuit filed by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores against the NFL and several of its teams alleging racial discrimination in their hiring practices, I am ready for both football and some of my favorite rappers of all time to take the stage. This will be the Super Bowl’s first all hip-hop halftime show, with rappers Eminem and Kendrick Lamar rounding out the lineup. Collectively, these five artists have released 22 No. 1 Billboard albums and have won 43 Grammy Awards. “I’m extremely excited to share the stage with my friends for the #PepsiHalftime Show,” Dr. Dre shared in a tweet. “This will introduce the next saga of my career. Bigger and Better than Ever!!!” Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Lamar are all from California, so I expect to see a lot of California Love being represented throughout the show. “The West Coast is hip-hop,” said Keion Cage, a Rhoden Fellow at The Undefeated. “Having all of these legends on one stage will go down as a historic moment.” Added Jamirah Chevrin, a medical student at the Morehouse School of Medicine who has seen every halftime show since 2004, “This will be a big moment in music to celebrate African American culture during Black History Month.” Still, even with all of the hype and excitement, I wonder if there will be some form of protest aimed at the NFL. Many in the Black community have likened this year’s halftime show to performative activism. “The NFL Super Bowl halftime show has had a shady relationship with Black musicians — especially hip-hop artists,” said David Dennis Jr., a senior writer for The Undefeated, in a discussion about why Flores’ bombshell lawsuit has made the show about far more than music. “… this all seems like a backhanded compliment. The NFL hasn’t done enough since [Colin] Kaepernick to make me believe that they care about many of the folks who look like the people performing onstage this year. Add in the Flores lawsuit and we’re looking at another year of the NFL skating by while having little regard for us.” Given that Lamar is known for being both a political and socially conscious rapper, I also wonder if he will use his performance to address the NFL’s diversity problem. At the 2016 Grammys, he delivered what many hailed as the performance of the night, walking out on stage as part of a chain gang to perform his single “The Blacker The Berry,” with his band locked inside jail cells. Two years later, he had another politically-charged Grammys performance, when he opened the show by “shooting” his red hoodie-wearing backup dancers one by one until they were all “dead” on the stage. Protests or not, I’m sure there will be a lot to talk about on Monday. My prediction for the game? Rams 24, Bengals 21. For the halftime show? My money is on Snoop Dogg for best performance. For the NFL and diversity? We still have a ways to go with that one. — Calvin Sykes