One of the most-anticipated mega events of the year, the Super Bowl Halftime Show took place on Sunday, February 13, at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. At the mega event, music personalities including Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J Blige, and Kendrick Lamar performed together joined a list of celebrated musicians who have played during Super Bowl halftime shows, including Madonna, Coldplay, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, U2, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira.
With the Los Angeles Rams taking on the Cincinnati Bengals, this marks the first time that the Super Bowl – one of the biggest sporting events of the year in the US, has returned to the Los Angeles area.
Talking about one of the biggest surprises during the mega event, 50 Cent delivered a power pocked rendition of In Da Club and rapper Anderson .Paak on drums during Eminem’s performance of Lose Yourself.
The biggest surprise for Super Bowl Half time 2022 was kept under the wraps till the very last moment for obvious reasons. This year’s guest star was 50 Cent as he crooned In Da club. 50 cent appeared after Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg opened the show with Still Dre and California Love. The 56-year-old rapper delivered In Da Club while he was surrounded by gorgeous dancers.
Eminem’s performance was one of the biggest highlights for the Super Bowl. As NFL has allegedly instructed the Lose Yourself rapper to keep politics out of the halftime show, however, the 49-year-old rapper defied the rumoured instruction by kneeling down at the end of his performance of Lose Yourself for one minute. Earlier, the rapper did hint about the idea of kneeling ahead of his performance, but had been asked to avoid doing so by Super Bowl organisers. For the unversed, the form of protest by kneeling was brought to the NFL by Colin Kaepernick, who first began sitting silently on benches during the national anthem, at the start of the 2016 season on 26 August.
The act of Eminem kneeling down has been praised by some, while others pointed out how Kaepernick, a Black man, continues to be blacklisted for his protests against racial injustice, on the other hand, Eminem, who is white, was able to take the knee on 14 February on that same platform.
Coming back to the performance, a beaming Anderson .Paak was seen on drums during Eminem’s show of Lose Yourself, with Dr Dre also performing.
According to New York Post, in advance of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, several reports suggested that headliners Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Mary J Blige and Snoop Dogg were being heavily censored from making any political statements According to the New York Post, Dre felt “disgustingly censored” by executives who didn’t want the performance to become a “divisive culture war moment”.
But, Lamar chose to perform Alright for his segment, which felt significant given the rumoured requests to keep politics out of the halftime show. For the uninitiated, the song Alright emerged as an anthem against police brutality and racial injustice in 2015, after activists in Cleveland State University were filmed chanting it. Originally, the song appeared on Lamar’s universally acclaimed album To Pimp a Butterfly.
One of the major highlights of at the Super Bowl was Kanye West’s being spotted at 2021 NFL season at So-Fi Stadium. The controversial rapper was seen with his daughter North watching the Cincinnati Bengals take on the Los Angeles Rams in the climax of the match. The Yeezy owner was spotted donning a black mask covering his face while sitting with North and wide receiver Antonio Brown. All three were shown on the jumbotron, and Kanye’s daughter North appeared to be caught off-guard as she realised she was on the big screen.
