K. Dot’s halftime-show booking came thanks in part to the NFL’s partnership with the Roc Nation founder—and has heated up long-standing issues between Jay and fellow artists like Lil Wayne, Drake, and Nicki Minaj.
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Super Bowl halftime show announcements are typically met with either excitement or derision, hype or apathy. It’s a 13-minute show on America’s biggest stage that, barring special occasions, only one artist can headline—it’s impossible to make everybody happy. But the announcement this past weekend that Kendrick Lamar will play Super Bowl LIX’s halftime show next February has produced an unprecedented mushroom cloud of cultural infighting, debate, and long-simmering disdain.
The big game is set to go down in February in New Orleans; there are those who believe that, given the location, Louisiana’s own Lil Wayne should have been offered the opportunity to put on a hometown-hero set, the way Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg did back in 2022 when the halftime show took place in Inglewood. Complicating matters is the involvement of Jay-Z, who entered into a partnership with the NFL back in 2019 that includes producing the halftime show, and has therefore become—fairly or not—the de facto face of the decision-making process. Jay-Z is a lightning rod for discourse on his own; factor in Kendrick and his beef with Drake, plus Drake’s alliances with figures who have their own issues with Jay-Z and/or Kendrick, and we basically have a civil war brewing, all over a 13-minute production number during a football game.
At press time, Jay-Z hasn’t addressed any of this. Wayne went on IG Live to express his heartbreak over being apparently passed over, thanking the fans but making no mention of Kendrick or Jay either way.
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