Super Bowl LVI: A big night for hip-hop
“Well, that was awesome,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Sunday night’s Super Bowl halftime show turned out to be “an all-time great,” a 14-minute extravaganza during which a dream team of veteran rappers delivered a rousing celebration of West Coast hip-hop and its scattered heirs. Compton’s own Dr. Dre played ringleader. The onetime N.W.A rapper and longtime record producer brought along collaborators and protégés
Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar, who, at 34, stood out as a relative youngster. “Indeed, this had to be the most Gen X Super Bowl ever.” But the performance, seen in 29 million U.S. households, ranked as “a career highlight for practically everyone involved” and “a proud moment for rap fans.” In the 21 years since Nelly joined Aerosmith for the 2001 halftime show, the NFL has used hip-hop artists mostly as supporting performers to major rock and pop acts. This show handed center stage to a proud band of legendary rappers, and the result was both “a triumph” and “a timely reminder of why hip-hop is crucial to the story of American music.”
The “funky, trunk-rattling” spectacle was also “a proud celebration of Black L.A.,” said Mikael Wood in the Los Angeles Times. Swaggering around an elaborate set that included replicas of such local landmarks as Dale’s Donuts, Dre and Snoop kicked things off with “The Next Episode” and “California Love.” Snoop even tossed in a Crip walk, while dancers on the field twirled between sparkly lowriders. Lamar, the leading voice of West Coast rap today, later emerged from amid a phalanx of Black male dancers to deliver a “sober and electrifying” performance of his 2015 anthem “Alright.”
He appeared to remove one explicit reference to police from his lyrics—“a possible concession to the NFL.”
The only flash of radicalism came when Eminem, wrapping up a “stadium-shaking” performance of “Lose Yourself,” dropped to one knee, said Jon Caramanica in The New
York Times. The NFL was aware, though, that he had planned to salute Colin Kaepernick by mirroring the ex-quarterback’s silent 2016 protests against police violence. “Is it still protest if it’s been signed off on and approved?” The symbolism of the entire show was complicated, said Andre Gee in Complex. A triumph for Black music doesn’t erase the NFL’s egregiously poor record on hiring Black coaches. Nor does a career night for Dre excuse the failings that might have justly cost him this opportunity. “There were millions of women,” after all, “who couldn’t enjoy the performance in light of his past violence toward women.” Flaws are to be expected, though, of participants in a show this big. In the end, it’s impossible to “ascend capitalism” to such a height without making moral compromises.