Dr. Dre Almost Backed Out of the Super Bowl Halftime Show Until Jay-Z and Nas Convinced Him to Do It
Grammy-winning rapper and producer Dr. Dre headlined the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show alongside other hip-hop legends Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem. But before he took the stage, Dre had to be convinced to go on with the show.
Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has been in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019
In 2019, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Entertainment company signed a deal with the NFL in what many criticized as a way of selling out to the league. Prior to the deal, the NFL was under fire for its treatment of Colin Kaepernick. And after Kaepernick left the league, artists including Cardi B and Rihanna turned down performing at the Super Bowl halftime show in support of Kaepernick and a way of standing against the NFL.
Dr. Dre was aware of this context before he performed at the Super Bowl, and was close to backing out of the show entirely.
Jay-Z and Nas had to convince Dr. Dre to perform
Eventually, of course, Dre ended up moving forward with the show. But it wasn’t an easy decision. In an August 2022 interview on Dolvett Quince’s Workout the Doubt podcast, Dre admitted that he was worried about being called a “sellout” for working with the NFL.
“I was absolutely concerned about that,” he said. “I actually called a couple of close friends and said, ‘Listen, I’m gonna pull out. I’m not gonna do the show. Because I don’t know if I want that smoke. I don’t know if I want the backlash after doing the show and potentially looking like a f***ing sellout or something like that.’”
Dre revealed that he had to be talked down from the ledge by Nas and Jay-Z.
“I got on the phone with Nas. He called me up and was like, ‘Yo bro’ — you know, Nas has that voice — ‘Yo bro, you gotta do it. You gotta do this. It’s gonna be so powerful for f***ing hip-hop, for the culture, for you, for L.A. and the whole nine.’”
“We were on the phone for like 10 minutes and he talked me into doing it,” he added. “Nas and Jay-Z were big reasons why I decided to do the show.”
Dr. Dre performed alongside hip-hop legends
In the end, the NFL had little involvement in the actual running of the show. It comes two years after the NFL tried to change elements of Jennifer Lopez’s performance in 2020.
After the Super Bowl, Dre spoke with TMZ about what exactly was changed in the 2022 show.
“There were a few things we had to change but it was like, really minor things,” he said. “Em taking a knee, that was Em doing that on his own and there was no problem with that.”
He also noted that the mention of Pirus and Crips in Kendrick Lamar’s song “m.A.A.d. city” was censored. “They had a problem with that, so we had to take that out. No big deal, we did it,” Dre said. “But all in all, everybody came in, we were professional, everybody was on time and everybody really felt the magnitude of what this thing was and what we were gonna be able to accomplish.”
“It was a fantastic experience.”
