Nostalgia was inescapable on Super Bowl Sunday

The New York Times

Super Bowl halftime mostly featured hip-hop songs from decades ago. The Super Bowl ads also celebrated pop-culture from decades past, from Austin Powers to The Cable Guy to The Sopranos. And the only TV show to premiere on Super Bowl Sunday, Bel-Air, is a reboot of 1990s sitcom classic The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. "The big game, its spectacles, its ads and its trappings all shared a sense of looking backward — a nostalgia-saturated attitude that we were living in the aftermath of the best times, and that it was more comforting to look to the past than to the future," says James Poniewozik. "This is not a knock on Dr. Dre, or the incendiary legends-of-hip-hop show he put on. For the game to finally center America’s biggest music genre in front of America’s biggest audience was overdue and thrilling. But the calendar doesn’t lie. The Super Bowl, as a rule, discovers music when that music’s audience discovers high-fiber diets, and the price of admission was knowing that this revolutionary soundtrack was now dad’s treadmill workout playlist. Snoop Dogg commanded the midfield stage, cool and resplendent in a blue bandanna tracksuit; that afternoon he had hosted the Puppy Bowl with Martha Stewart. Remember-when was everywhere at Super Bowl LVI, an event that counts off the ceaseless march of time in its very name." Poniewozik adds: "Once, ad campaigns could unite an audience not just by returning to the past but by promising a glittering future. But now the future is confusing — see all the ads for cryptocurrency — or scary."

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• Dr. Dre says the NFL only requested "minor" changes to hip-hop lyrics and had no problem with Eminem taking a knee: “There were a few things that we had to change, but it was like really minor things,” Dre told TMZ. Dre said Kendrick Lamar had to remove references to L.A. gangs, but added that it was “no big deal, we get it.” Dre was also asked about reports -- which the NFL denied -- that it objected to Eminem taking a knee. “Em taking a knee, that was him doing that on his own and there was no problem with that," he said.
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