Super Bowl hip-hop halftime show featured "a dynamic performance sprawling atop a moat of potential political land mines"

The New York Times

"In the main, there was exuberant entertainment, a medley of hits so central to American pop that it practically warded off dissent," says Jon Caramanica of the performance starring Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige. He adds:  "The performances were almost uniformly excellent. Lamar was stunning — ecstatically liquid in flow, moving his body with jagged vigor....But the true battles of this halftime show were between enthusiasm and cynicism, censorship and protest, the amplification of Black performers on this stage and the stifling of Black voices in various stages of protest against the N.F.L. Just a couple of weeks ago, the N.F.L. was sued by the former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores who said he had faced discriminatory hiring practices."

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• The performers pulled off a dazzling, almost overwhelming, celebration: "The stage looked like no halftime show’s before," says Spencer Kornhaber. "At the center of Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium sat a strip of mock buildings: homes, businesses, a re-creation of Compton’s Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. The design was fitting for an art form rooted in a sense of place—and for a performance with three headliners from Southern California. It also ensured a remarkably horizontal show. No one was ever that much higher up than anyone else. Pop goddesses were not diving from the rafters, and guitar heroes were not casting elephantine shadows. Rather, the audience toured from room to room, from vibe to vibe, and from host to host. The spectacle felt—to quote Blige’s hit that proved itself still vibrant after two decades—like a family affair."
• Dr. Dre led one of the all-time great Super Bowl halftime shows: "Well, that was awesome," says Rob Sheffield. "The Super Bowl halftime show finally opened up to hip-hop—this was the first time the rappers got to bumrush center stage, instead of serving as a sideshow. And it was a triumph. Dr. Dre presided over an all-time great Super Bowl blowout, rocking alongside Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Anderson .Paak on drums. It was a celebration of West Coast rap history at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, in a battle between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals." Sheffield adds: "The big dramatic moment: Eminem did take a knee at the end of 'Lose Yourself,' an unmissable shout out to Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement. Given the NFL’s blatantly racist ban on Kaepernick, after he began the take-a-knee movement to protest police brutality, it was a bold move. So the knee made all the difference, and the NFL got tackled on its home field."
• NFL denies report it tried to stop Eminem from taking a knee: “We watched all elements of the show during multiple rehearsals this week and were aware that Eminem was going to do that,” said NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy.
• Super Bowl halftime executive producer Jesse Collins on the challenges of producing this year's spectacle: "We've been in development of this since last September, just talking every week, every single moment, and we've been in hard rehearsals probably for the last three weeks," says Collins. "I think the hardest part of it was getting it (down) to 13 minutes."
• Unannounced upside down 50 Cent was arguably the highlight of Super Bowl halftime
• Snoop Dogg was spotted smoking weed before Super Bowl halftime