Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and surprise guests 50 Cent and Anderson Paak performed an early 2000s extravaganza at Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, which was pure millennial nostalgia.
Only one song, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” was released in the last decade, and it was the first halftime performance featuring only rap and hip-hop musicians. And the young audience ate it up wholeheartedly.
The event began with Dre and Snoop Dogg playing “The Next Episode,” a 1999 song, while standing on top of LA eateries and other white shipping container structures, before moving on to 2Pac’s 1995 song “California Love.”
Dre and Snoop Dogg are both from California, and the game was held at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Surprise guest 50 Cent — there had been reports he might join the concert after being sighted at rehearsals – appeared upside down, singing “In Da Club,” a major hit from 2003, with a very low energy but nevertheless amusing performance.
Mary J. Blige walked into the auditorium in mirrored thigh-high boots to sing “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” both legendary songs from 2001, while Eminem followed with a performance of the 2002 smash “Lose Yourself,” complete with the “mom’s spaghetti” lyric.
Dre apparently suffered a brain aneurysm in January 2021, and this was his first performance since then.
The artists seemed to be constantly paying tribute to the 56-year-old rapper, with Lamar’s dancers wearing suits with “Dre Day” sashes across them, and all of the performers joining in for the final “it’s the D R E” lyrics during the show’s last song, “Still D.R.E.”
Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, and Jay-Z were among the early 2000s musical aristocracy in attendance.
Millennials on Twitter (look, presumably Gen X as well, but as always they are forgotten) declared it the best halftime show ever.
Decades into the genre’s domination of pop music — but not too soon for the famously conservative National Football League — Dre took over the field at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, close to where the Grammy-winning rapper and producer grew up in Compton, alongside Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar for a nearly 14-minute spectacle that included some of the biggest rap hits of the last 30 years. 50 Cent, who hadn’t been announced in advance, also showed up to do his indelible “In Da Club,” which Dre co-produced.
The concert, which took place in the middle of the Los Angeles Rams’ home victory against the Cincinnati Bengals, was a proud celebration of Black L.A. from the start, with architectural replicas of Tam’s Burgers, Dale’s Donuts, and the Compton courthouse adorning the set. Questlove, the drummer for the Roots and the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Summer of Soul,” described the event as “the most beautiful blackest sever” on Twitter, adding that it was “the antidote for ALL the ‘Up With People’s endured in the last 5 decades.” Chuck D of Public Enemy tweeted that it was the best halftime show since Prince in 2007.
Dre and Snoop opened 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 women.
Next up came Mary J. Blige, who performed the low-slung “Family Affair” — another Dre-helmed hit — and “No More Drama,” which she closed with a flourish of growly R&B vocals that had to be among the most emotional and impassioned in Super Bowl history.
Lamar, widely considered 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. The performance was somber and electrifying, however, Lamar changed a phrase about how “po-po want to kill us dead in the street for sure” to eliminate the explicit reference to cops — a likely concession to the NFL, which is generally known to have maintained a tight relationship with halftime performers.
Eminem began his segment of the fast-paced show by rapping a few lines from “Forgot About Dre” before moving 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.
To close out the Super Bowl LVI show, the six hip-hop heavyweights gathered at SoFi’s 50-yard line for a swaggering run through “Still D.R.E”; unlike Lamar earlier, Dre — who released “F— Tha Police” with his group N.W.A in the late ’80s — preserved the song’s line in which he says he’s “still not loving police.”
Is Halftime (2022) available on Amazon Prime?
Amazon prime will not be streaming Halftime (2022). Additionally, several other films are streaming on Prime. Our recommendations are The Voyagers, It’s a Wonderful Life, Notting Hill, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Is Halftime (2022) available on HBO Max?
HBO Max will not be streaming Halftime (2022). However, HBO’s subscribers can enjoy its other popular streams like Euphoria, When Harry Met Sally, and Promising Young Woman.
Is Halftime (2022) available on Hulu?
Halftime (2022) is not available on Hulu. The new release line-up additionally includes Pam and Tommy, How I Met Your Father, Abbott Elementary, and Vikings.
Is Halftime (2022) available on Netflix?
Halftime (2022) will be available to stream on Netflix. However, other brilliant shows like The Power of The Dog, The Social Network, Tick, Tick, Boom, and much more are available.
Where to Watch Halftime (2022)?
Halftime (2022) is available to stream on YouTube as the entire performance was uploaded to the online video-sharing platform by NFL. We do not recommend illegal streaming and always suggest paying for the content you like to watch.