Well, that was awesome. 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.
The whole lineup was a dream-team of rap old-schoolers, with Kendrick as the new kid on the block. Indeed, this had to be the most Gen-X Super Bowl ever: Dre, Snoop, Mary, Em, Meadow Soprano’s car commercial, Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, Salt N Pepa, Doja Cat doing Hole’s “Celebrity Skin,” and a Bengals quarterback who looks like he’s Spiral Stairs in a…
