Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige will headline the 2022 Super Bowl LVI halftime show.
The NFL shared the news in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, celebrating the artists’ collective accolades. “43 Grammys, 19 No. 1 Billboard albums and 5 legendary artists on the biggest stage in Los Angeles for the #SBLVI #PepsiHalftime show,” the league wrote.
Super Bowl LVI will take place on Feb. 13, 2022, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. It’s the first Los Angeles-based Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXVII was held at the Rose Bowl in 1993, and Michael Jackson set a new precedent for halftime shows with a performance that attracted over 133 million viewers.
Jay-Z’s Roc Nation will produce the 2022 halftime show, which will appropriately celebrate several West Coast hip-hop legends. Dre and Lamar both hail from Compton, and Snoop Dogg grew up in Long Beach.
“The opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and to do it in my own backyard, will be one of the biggest thrills of my career,” Dr. Dre said in a statement. “I’m grateful to Jay-Z, Roc Nation, the NFL, and Pepsi as well as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar for joining me in what will be an unforgettable cultural moment.”
Booking Dr. Dre, Eminem or Lamar by themselves would have been a huge get for the NFL; getting all three of them together along with Snoop Dogg and Blige is monumental. Eminem tours infrequently these days, reserving most of his U.S. performances for festivals. Lamar, likewise, hasn’t performed in the U.S. since 2019, while Dr. Dre has not toured in decades. (In fact, the 2022 halftime show lineup is reminiscent of 2000’s Up in Smoke Tour, which was headlined by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and featured Eminem, Ice Cube, Nate Dogg and several other West Coast rappers.)
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