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      Rap Takes Over Super Bowl Halftime, Balancing Celebration and Protest

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      Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent asserted the power of hip-hop’s oldies generation on pop music’s most-watched stage.Leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, much ado was made over the fact that this would be the first year that hip-hop occupied the center of the concert. It was marketing copy that overlooked the glaring lateness of the achievement — that rap was finally getting the spotlight in perhaps the 20-somethingth year of hip-hop occupying the center of American pop music. Does progress this delayed still count as a breakthrough?After several years of grappling with an assortment of racial controversies, the N.F.L. likely wanted credit for showcasing Black music — especially hip-hop, the lingua franca of American pop culture — this prominently. What would some of rap music’s generational superstars — Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar — titans with little fear for their reputations, do with this most visible of platforms?The stories told on the SoFi Stadium field Sunday night were multilayered, a dynamic performance sprawling atop a moat of potential political land mines. In the main, there was exuberant entertainment, a medley of hits so central to American pop that it practically warded off dissent.Dr. Dre opened up the performance behind a mock mixing board, a nod to the root of his celebrity: the ability to mastermind sound. For the next 12 minutes, vivid and thumping hits followed, including “The Next Episode,” a wiry collaboration between Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, wearing a blue bandanna-themed sweatsuit; “California Love” (mercifully, delivered without a hologram of Tupac Shakur, as some had rumored); Eminem’s stadium-shaking “Lose Yourself”; Lamar’s pugnacious and proud “Alright”; and a pair of songs from Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill.50 Cent, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the set, was an unannounced guest, performing his breakout hit “In Da Club,” one of Dr. Dre’s seminal productions. (This was almost certainly the most bleeped halftime show ever.)Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill, performed two songs including “No More Drama.”AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe performances were almost uniformly excellent. Lamar was stunning — ecstatically liquid in flow, moving his body with jagged vigor. Snoop Dogg was confident beyond measure, a veteran of high-pressure comfort. Eminem, insular as ever, still emanated robust tension. Blige was commanding, helping to bring the middle segment of the show into slow focus with a joyous “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” rich with purple pain. And Dr. Dre beamed throughout, a maestro surveying the spoils of the decades he spent reorchestrating the shape and texture of pop.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.This halftime show, which scanned as an oasis of racial comity if not quite progressivism, was the third orchestrated as part of a partnership between the N.F.L. and Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, that was struck in the wake of the kneeling protests spawned by Colin Kaepernick in 2016.“It’s crazy that it took all of this time for us to be recognized,” Dr. Dre said at the game’s official news conference last week, underscoring that the N.F.L. essentially chose to wait until hip-hop had become oldies music — apart from Lamar, all the artists Sunday had their commercial and creative peaks more than a decade ago — in order to grant it full rein on its biggest stage.The N.F.L. is notoriously protective of its territory, and mishaps at the halftime show — Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, M.I.A.’s middle finger — have tended to cause outsized public brouhahas. Halftime may well be one of the last stages in this country where hip-hop still feels like outsider music, amplifying the sense that the interests of the league and of the performers might not have been fully aligned.Eminem concluded “Lose Yourself” on one knee.AJ Mast for The New York TimesThis year’s event also took place in Inglewood, just 20 minutes west of Compton, where Dr. Dre was a founder of N.W.A, one of the most important hip-hop groups of all time, godfathers of gangster rap and agit-pop legends. Compton was embedded into the stage setup: the buildings included signs for its various landmarks, including Tam’s Burgers, Dale’s Donuts, and the nightclub Eve After Dark, where Dr. Dre used to perform with his first group, World Class Wreckin’ Cru. The dances, from Crip-walking to krumping, were Los Angeles specific. Three vintage Chevrolet Impalas served as visual nods to lowrider culture. Lamar performed his segment atop a massive aerial photograph of the city.Understand the N.F.L.’s Recent ControversiesCard 1 of 5A wave of scrutiny. More

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      How Hip-Hop Inched Its Way to the Super Bowl Halftime Stage

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      At Sunday’s game, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar will lead the first-ever halftime performance with rap at its center. The genre has taken a roundabout path to get there.On Sunday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., the Super Bowl halftime show will feature the local rap heroes Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar, placing hip-hop firmly at the center of the annual spectacle, which is routinely watched by more than 100 million people, for the first time.The show, which is being produced in part by Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, will also star Eminem and Mary J. Blige, but it will not be the first to include rap music. The genre has taken a rocky, roundabout path to headliner status at the Super Bowl, with this year’s event coming at an increasingly fraught moment for the N.F.L. regarding race.That baggage is nothing new: At least since 2016, when the quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police killings of Black people, the league has faced questions about its commitment to diversity and social justice, on the field and off. More than 70 percent of the league’s players are Black, but the N.F.L. has no Black owners and, until recently, only one Black head coach. This month, Brian Flores, the Miami Dolphins head coach who was fired last month, sued the league, claiming he and others had been discriminated against in the hiring process.Those debates have trickled into its entertainment business. In 2017, well before his company partnered with the N.F.L., Jay-Z turned down an offer to perform at the Super Bowl, and reportedly urged others to do the same. In subsequent years, with Jay-Z declaring “we’ve moved past kneeling” to some backlash among players and fans, Roc Nation has booked pop extravaganzas featuring the Weeknd, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira.But Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg — while among the most recognizable hip-hop veterans with decades of hits and pop culture cachet between them — represent something different, and that may be the idea. “At one point, Dre was in a group that was banned by popular culture,” said Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, which headlined the show in 2011, referencing the widespread controversies of Dr. Dre’s early gangster rap act N.W.A.That the N.F.L. has now turned to these once-controversial figures with their own checkered pasts may seem far removed from the days of pearl-clutching regarding Janet Jackson’s 2004 wardrobe malfunction, M.I.A.’s middle finger in 2012 and Beyoncé’s nods to the Black Panthers in 2016. But some say it’s also indicative of the league’s long, jagged journey to embrace Black music and culture — especially rap — as well as its need to shore up its community bona fides now.“The N.F.L. is positioning the halftime show as a meaningful occurrence,” Dr. Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management at the University Michigan and the director of the Center for Race & Ethnicity in Sport, said in an interview. “But to some, it seems performative for the N.F.L. to feature these artists. It feels like window dressing. You’re using Black talent to entertain the masses, but what are you doing that would honor the essence of hip-hop, like addressing racial injustices in the communities that have bred this labor force of Black talent?”Dive Deeper Into the Super Bowl Optimism and Anxiety: This year, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood will host the Super Bowl. What does the event mean for the city? Home Advantage: The Rams will use their usual facilities and home stadium in the game against the Bengals. Here is how they are getting ready.Cooper Kupp: The Rams receiver managed an All-Pro season, becoming a sure-handed catcher and the driving force behind the team’s success.Joe Burrow: He has led the Bengals to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1989. But he still thinks about that playoff loss in high school.The Super Bowl halftime stage was not always a place for hitmakers. In 1967, with popular music venturing into daring directions, a television audience of about 51 million watched the University of Arizona Symphonic Marching Band perform a selection of tunes including the Dixie anthem “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.”Other marching bands had the spotlight for years, as did avatars of safe, family-oriented entertainment, like Andy Williams and Carol Channing. No rock performer played the halftime show until 1988, almost seven years into the MTV era, when the oldies act Chubby Checker twisted at Super Bowl XXII. Three year later, New Kids on the Block would become the first contemporary pop group to perform at the event, and the show remained blandly middle-of-the-road until Michael Jackson’s powerhouse performance in 1993.In the years that followed, established greats like Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder dominated, sometimes with more modern acts like Gloria Estefan and Boyz II Men as guests, though the burgeoning hip-hop of the 1990s remained absent. When Queen Latifah joined the Motown tribute in 1998, she performed “Paper,” one of her first songs to not feature any rapping.The next modern M.C. to take the Super Bowl stage was Nelly in 2001, as part of a larger ensemble of pop figures. He returned in 2004 and was joined by P. Diddy, bringing more contemporary rap to the performance than ever before. But that was also the year that changed everything: After a medley of appearances by Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, Janet Jackson sang, among other songs, “Rhythm Nation” — an idealistic ode to unity and Black power (“Join voices in protest/To social injustice”) — before finishing the show by duetting with Justin Timberlake on his hit “Rock Your Body.” Just before the commercial break, Timberlake put his hand on Jackson’s costume, pulled at it and exposed her right breast, triggering a national uproar.Missy Elliott, left, joined Katy Perry at halftime in 2015. Will.i.am performed with the Black Eyed Peas in 2011, ushering in a new era of pop on the halftime stage after a period of classic rock acts.From left: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images; Adam Bettcher/Getty ImagesFor years after, the Super Bowl halftime producers retreated to the safety of classic rock: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and the Who all performed. It was during that period of careful conservatism that Will.i.am saw an opening.“I flew out to New Jersey, went to the N.F.L. headquarters, and I pitched the Black Eyed Peas,” he said in an interview. “We weren’t, like, ‘Yo, we’re family friendly!’ Or ‘We rated PG, bro.’ My pitch was, ‘You know you need to have pop on the halftime show again.’” It wouldn’t be long, he warned the N.F.L., before they ran out of classic rock bands.In 2011, the Black Eyed Peas got the gig, inching the N.F.L. back toward the modern mainstream. But concerns about putting on a show palatable to all audiences lingered. “There’s a girl in our group,” Will.i.am said, referring to the singer Fergie. “They were nervous about that,” he said, and “checked our wardrobe like we were going through freakin’ security at the airport.”“You’ve got to understand the circumstances, and the walls that were up,” Will.i.am added. “We cracked open the door to get the N.F.L. out of that fear of pop and urban music after a seven-year break of only going legacy. To now have everybody from Bruno to Beyoncé to Dre and Snoop — talk about a total perspective change on the importance of diversity and inclusion,” he said, referring to Bruno Mars, who headlined in 2014 and returned as a guest two years later.Yet even as rap slowly regained its place on the Super Bowl stage — with Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, Travis Scott and Big Boi all making cameos in the last decade — questions linger about whether the music and its messages can transcend the 12-minute show now that the genre is taking prominence.“The N.F.L. is trying to look better by celebrating hip-hop, but they need to do better,” said Dr. Armstrong, the professor. “I’m hoping the artists are going to use their own power and influence to get them to do so.”A Brief History of Hip-Hop at HalftimeSuper Bowl XXXII (1998)When in doubt, it’s always safe to program something nostalgic, like a salute to Motown’s 40th anniversary (the label was founded in 1959). The featured acts were the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, and Martha and the Vandellas. To balance the generational appeal, they were joined by the label’s then top current act — the throwback harmony group Boyz II Men — as well as the Motown rapper Queen Latifah, who sang a new-jack-swing-inspired version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”Super Bowl XXXV (2001)The St. Louis rapper Nelly, who’d released the breakout Top 20 pop hit “E.I.” in 2000, was an afterthought on this bill, which featured the rock band Aerosmith, then in its fourth decade, and the peppy pop phenoms ’N Sync. The two groups alternated songs, then united for the big finale, “Walk This Way,” joined by Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly, whose “E.I.”/”Walk This Way” mash-up included only half of his first verse. Total camera time for rap: 18 seconds.Super Bowl XXXVIII (2004)Three years later, Nelly returned and performed his No. 1 hit “Hot in Herre,” which urged listeners to “take off all your clothes.” Combined with Kid Rock and P. Diddy, there was far more rap included than in any previous Super Bowl show. But this infamous halftime show is mostly remembered for the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake incident, in which her breast was mostly exposed. Not long after, Jawed Karim, a computer science and engineering student, grew frustrated at how difficult it was to find a clip of that moment online, and sensing a market niche for a video-sharing site, soon helped found YouTube.Super Bowl XLV (2011)The N.F.L. disappeared pop music from the halftime show for several years, eager to avoid bad publicity or Congressional criticism. But the supply of widely beloved rock stars was limited, and Ricky Kirshner, in his debut as the show’s producer, brought in the pop-rap group Black Eyed Peas. The group dashed through their many hits while leaping around a set that looked like a “Tron” reboot. And in the Super Bowl’s attempt at broader appeal, Slash of the rock band Guns N’ Roses played guitar while Fergie, of the Black Eyed Peas, sang the band’s ferocious “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”Super Bowl XLVI (2012)Madonna headlined the show in a gladiator’s cingulum — with ample help from the briefly massive party-rap duo LMFAO; the rapper and singer Cee Lo Green; and Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., two inventive rap talents who’d recently recorded “Give Me All Your Luvin’” with Madonna. M.I.A.’s verse had a few expletives, which were bleeped out, and in their stead, she raised her left middle finger to the camera. The F.C.C. reportedly received more than 200 complaints, about one for every 450,000 viewers. The N.F.L. apologized to its audience and filed arbitration claims seeking $16.6 million from M.I.A., whom they said violated a contract requiring her to comply with anti-profanity standards. This prompted M.I.A. to tweet at Madonna, “Can I borrow 16 million?” The conflict was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.Super Bowl XLIX (2015)In the most-watched halftime show ever, with nearly 115 million viewers, the headliner Katy Perry was joined by Lenny Kravitz for a rocking rendition of her hit “I Kissed a Girl,” but the true second banana was Missy Elliott, who performed parts of three of her tracks: “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It” and “Lose Control.” The pairing of Perry and Elliott seemed more natural than other shotgun marriages, because both are pop surrealists. More than two years later, Elliott tweeted that she’d been in the hospital the night before the Super Bowl, and when her first song started, “I was SO SHOOK. I said Lord I can’t turn back now.”Super Bowl LIII (2019)In solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, a number of Black artists were rumored to have turned down offers to perform in 2019. Instead, Maroon 5 headlined with guest spots from Travis Scott and Big Boi of Outkast. “It’s what it is,” the Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine said after people criticized the band and accused it of violating a boycott. “We’d like to move on from it.”Super Bowl LIV (2020)The N.F.L. knew it had to fix its relationship with hip-hop, and partnered with Jay-Z and Roc Nation to produce the Super Bowl halftime show. Kaepernick “was done wrong,” Jay-Z told The New York Times. “But it was three years ago, and someone needs to say, ‘What do we do now — because people are still dying?’” The headliners were Shakira, a Roc Nation management client, and Jennifer Lopez: two Latina women who have released albums in Spanish as well as English. They were joined by Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper and singer; and J Balvin, a Colombian who brought reggaeton, rap’s younger Spanish-speaking cousin from the Caribbean, to the Super Bowl stage. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: The Super Bowl and an Oscar Micheaux Documentary

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      The Super Bowl airs on NBC. And TCM airs a documentary about a pathbreaking filmmaker.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 7-Feb. 13. Details and times are subject to change.MondayLOVE & BASKETBALL (2000) 6 p.m. on BET. Football is front of mind this week, but Gina Prince-Bythewood’s coming-of-age classic “Love & Basketball” is timeless. Set in Los Angeles, the movie stars Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as young people who are passionate for each other and for the game.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: MARIAN ANDERSON — THE WHOLE WORLD IN HER HANDS (2022) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The filmmaker Rita Coburn (“Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise”) looks at the barrier-breaking contralto Marian Anderson in this new documentary. Anderson is perhaps best known for her 1939 concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which became a civil rights milestone; she also broke the color barrier for soloists at the Metropolitan Opera and toured for the State Department. Anderson’s life and legacy — she died in 1993 at 96 — are discussed here by interviewees including the tenor George Shirley and the mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and J’nai Bridges.WednesdayA scene from “Fairview.”Comedy CentralFAIRVIEW 8:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. A small American town deals with big changes in this new, “South Park”-esque half-hour animated series, which counts Stephen Colbert among its executive producers. The stand-up comic Blair Socci voices the mayor of Fairview, where people’s jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence; Covid is a concern; and, in at least one case, a student gives a school presentation on his father’s career running an explicit OnlyFans account. While moderating an interview panel at New York Comic Con last year, the comedy writer-performer Jen Spyra said to the “Fairview” creator R.J. Fried, “I understand that you take the comedy to some abjectly disgusting places.” Fried responded calmly and succinctly: “That’s for sure.” The voice cast also includes the comics Aparna Nancherla and Atsuko Okatsuka.ThursdayDavid Oyelowo and Storm Reid in “Don’t Let Go.”Lacey Terrell/Universal PicturesDON’T LET GO (2019) 5:20 p.m. on FXM. Grief seems to bend time in “Don’t Let Go,” a sci-fi thriller led by David Oyelowo and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes. Oyelowo plays Jack Radcliff, a Los Angeles detective whose niece (played by Storm Reid) is murdered. But soon after the killing, Radcliff receives what is apparently a phone call from his dead niece, speaking from the past — or perhaps from another dimension. He sets off to untangle the mystery. The result is “a likable, derivative genre mash-up,” Manohla Dargis said in her review for The New York Times. “You get lost in its thickets because Estes hasn’t wholly figured out how to make toying with time work,” she wrote. “But he has a fine cast and a good sense of place, including a feel for the spookiness of emptied-out spaces.”FridayEVERYTHING’S GONNA BE ALL WHITE 8 p.m. on Showtime. The producer-director Sacha Jenkins (“Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James”) is behind this new three-part docuseries, which explores race and racism in America’s past and present. It does so with the help of interviewees from an array of fields — academic, political, artistic and more — including the historian Nell Irvin Painter, the human rights activist Linda Sarsour, the comedian Amanda Seales, the artist Favianna Rodriguez, the rapper Bun B and the sexuality educator Ericka Hart.SaturdayCRY MACHO (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Clint Eastwood plays a patinated Texas rodeo retiree tasked with transporting a boy (played by Eduardo Minett) from Mexico to the United States in this modern Western. (Or almost modern: It’s set in 1980.) Their journey is risky but roundabout, filled with 20-miles-an-hour detours that make the movie a slow burn. Its relative quiet is especially pronounced in comparison to the work that Eastwood is best known for — a trait that A.O. Scott welcomed, mostly, in his review for The Times. “This one,” Scott wrote, “is something different — a deep cut for the die-hards, a hangout movie with nothing much to prove and just enough to say.”SundayPaul Robeson in Oscar Micheaux’s “Body and Soul.” A documentary about Micheaux will air on TCM on Sunday night.Kino LorberOSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING (2021) 9:30 p.m. on TCM. From 1919 to 1948, the filmmaker Oscar Micheaux made some 40 movies filled with nuanced Black characters who broke screen stereotypes and often directly addressed issues of race. This documentary from the filmmaker Francesco Zippel (“Friedkin Uncut”) looks at Micheaux’s groundbreaking work and remarkable life: Micheaux’s parentshad once been enslaved, and he turned to professional storytelling only after a stint as a homesteader in South Dakota. His first film, “The Homesteader” (1919), was based on a fictionalized memoir he wrote. Produced about a century later, this documentary features perspectives from the late contemporary filmmakers John Singleton and Melvin Van Peebles, and a handful of performers and scholars.SUPER BOWL LVI 6 p.m. on NBC. Will the Los Angeles Rams or the Cincinnati Bengals prevail? What will it be like seeing two quarterbacks who were No. 1 draft picks — Joe Burrow of the Bengals and Matthew Stafford of the Rams — face off in a championship game, an extreme Super Bowl rarity? Most important, will Matthew McConaughey grace us with another weird, surrealist commercial, as he did for Doritos last year? Find out on Sunday during this live broadcast of the 56th Super Bowl. Viewers who are in it more for the culture (and, perhaps, the guacamole) will be glad to see a stacked halftime performance lineup: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar. More

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      The Moment That Janet Jackson’s Career Stalled and Justin Timberlake’s Soared

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      Jackson was vilified after her 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, while Timberlake’s popularity seemed to take off. Our new documentary examines how the superstars were treated after their unforgettable wardrobe malfunction.Reuters//Gary Hershorn (United States Entertainment)‘Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson’Producer/Director Jodi GomesReporter/Senior Producer Rachel AbramsReporter Alan LightWatch our new documentary on Friday, Nov. 19, at 10 p.m. on FX and streaming on Hulu.The term “wardrobe malfunction” has been part of our vocabulary ever since Janet Jackson’s right breast made a surprise appearance at the end of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.When Justin Timberlake tore off part of Jackson’s bustier in front of 70,000 people in Houston’s Reliant Stadium, over 140 million people watching on TV gasped — if they noticed.It happened so quickly (the moment lasted nine-sixteenths of one second) that even some of the halftime show’s producers missed it until their phones, and phones all over America, started ringing.“Did you see what just happened?” Jim Steeg, the National Football League’s director of special events, asked Salli Frattini, the MTV executive in charge of the halftime show. She had to rewind the tape to be sure.“We looked at the close-up shot. We looked at the wide shot, and we all stood there in shock,” Frattini recalled in a new documentary by The New York Times.Was it an accident? Was it planned? Was it a stunt?The ensuing uproar — from the N.F.L., from the Federal Communications Commission, from politicians and their allies — was the peak of a national debate at the time over what’s acceptable on America’s airwaves, and who gets to decide.In our documentary, premiering Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern time on FX and Hulu, we hear from the former commissioner of the N.F.L., Paul Tagliabue, and the MTV executives who were in charge of producing the halftime show. And we talk to some of the politicians who seized on the moment to try to rein in content that they deemed inappropriate.We also look back at Jackson’s long career, which never seemed to recover, while Timberlake’s soared. And we consider how issues of race and sexism mixed to consume one superstar’s legacy and propel another’s career to the next level.Supervising Producer Liz DayProducers Fred Charleston, Jr., Anthony McLemore, Timothy MoranCo-Producer Melanie BencosmeDirector of Photography Asad FaruqiVideo Editor Geoff O’Brien“The New York Times Presents” is a series of documentaries representing the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time. More

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      Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to Share Super Bowl Halftime

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      The N.F.L. announced the three Southern California natives will share billing with Mary J. Blige and Eminem at Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles.The N.F.L. announced Thursday that five performers would share headlining duties at the Super Bowl, with a distinct nod to West Coast hip-hop given the game’s location at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Three Southern California natives and rap titans — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar — will take the stage alongside Mary J. Blige and Eminem during the halftime show scheduled for Feb. 13, 2022. The game will air on NBC.“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.The halftime show for Super Bowl 56 will be the third produced by Roc Nation, the entertainment and sports company started by the music impresario Jay-Z, as the N.F.L. pushes to modernize the show and appeal to a more diverse audience. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were dual headliners of the 2020 performance in Miami Gardens, Fla. The Canadian pop superstar the Weeknd performed at halftime of February’s Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., before a crowd limited by coronavirus pandemic restrictions. He reportedly spent $7 million of his own money on the production, in part to ensure that the spectacle would wow TV audiences.Organizers said the expected return of the Super Bowl’s usual capacity crowd at SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion venue near Los Angeles International Airport that opened in 2020, would restore energy to the festivities.“This year we are blowing the roof off the concept of collaboration,” said Adam Harter, the senior vice president of media, sports and entertainment at PepsiCo, which sponsors the show. “Along with the N.F.L. and Roc Nation, we continue to try and push the limits on what fans can expect during the most exciting 12 minutes in music.”The Super Bowl is typically the most watched broadcast of the year, despite ratings declining in five of the past six years, notably among the advertiser-coveted demographic of people aged between 18 and 49. In February, 96 million people watched the Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, the game’s smallest audience in 15 years, despite the N.F.L.’s biggest star, quarterback Tom Brady, leading Tampa to victory. That decrease was in line with overall drops in viewership for sporting events held amid the pandemic.If advertiser interest is any indication, though, this season’s Super Bowl could mark a resurgence. NBC said earlier this month that it had nearly sold out of Super Bowl advertising spots, which cost a record $6.5 million for 30 seconds.Kevin Draper contributed reporting. More

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      Super Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuper Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.The game between two marquee quarterbacks was not competitive. Still, the Super Bowl is expected to be the most watched television program this year.Television viewership for the Super Bowl was down 9 percent compared with last year.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 4:20 p.m. ETSunday’s Super Bowl was watched by just 91.6 million people on CBS, the lowest number of viewers for the game on traditional broadcast television since 2006. A total of 96.4 million people watched when other platforms — like the CBS All Access streaming service and mobile phone apps — were counted, the lowest number of total viewers since 2007.Still, the Super Bowl will surely be the most watched television program of 2021, and the N.F.L. is expected to see a huge increase in television rights fees when it signs several new television distribution agreements over the next year.After peaking at 114 million television viewers in 2015, television ratings for the Super Bowl have declined in five of the past six years. The 9 percent decline in television viewership from last year’s Super Bowl is roughly in line with season-long trends. N.F.L. games this season were watched by 7 percent fewer people than the season before.Many of the necessary ingredients for a bonanza Super Bowl were present. The game featured an intriguing matchup between the two most popular quarterbacks in football, Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. The weather Sunday was freezing across much of the country, which traditionally drives people inside to be entertained by their televisions. But the game itself failed to deliver, all but ending by the third quarter when the Buccaneers led, 31-9, with no fourth-quarter scoring or hint of a competitive game. Viewership is measured as the average of the audience watching at each minute of the game; the longer a game is competitive and viewers stay tuned in, the better.The hype and marketing machine surrounding the game was also changed by the coronavirus pandemic. The N.F.L. credentialed about 4,000 fewer media members for the Super Bowl compared with last year, meaning fans saw less media live from the Super Bowl ahead of the game. Fans were discouraged from gathering for parties, and instead of staying home and watching alone, it seems many just did something else. Just 38 percent of all households with a television were tuned to the game, the lowest percentage since 1969, according to Nielsen.The N.F.L. joins almost every other sport in seeing viewership declines over the past year. The pandemic shut down the sporting world for months in the spring, and when games resumed they frequently lacked energy with few or no fans in the stands. Games were often played on unusual days or at unusual times, disrupting the traditional sports viewership calendar.Viewership for the N.B.A. finals was down 49 percent and for the Stanley Cup finals was down 61 percent. It is not just sports. Compared to this time last year, viewership of all broadcast television — CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox — is down 20 percent during prime time. In that context, a 7 percent season drop and a 9 percent Super Bowl drop is a comparatively decent showing for the N.F.L.Importantly, it also won’t slow down the N.F.L.’s march toward lucrative new television contracts. All indications — including deals made by other leagues and the competitive demand among networks and streaming services — suggest that the league will sign new agreements over the next year with a significant increase in average annual value.Even in a world of fractured viewership that is quickly moving toward streaming, the N.F.L. remains king. Of the 100 most viewed television programs in 2020, 76 were N.F.L. games, according to Mike Mulvihill, an executive at Fox Sports. And while the 38 percent of households tuned to the game was a modern day low for the Super Bowl, the last time that number was beat by anything other than an N.F.L. game was the 1994 Winter Olympics, according to the website Sports Media Watch, when the figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding competed amid the scandal of Harding’s involvement in an attack on Kerrigan.The N.F.L. could become the king of streaming, too. According to CBS the Super Bowl averaged 5.7 million viewers streaming the game, 68 percent more than last year.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Tackles ‘Weirdest Super Bowl’ Ever

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightJimmy Kimmel Tackles ‘Weirdest Super Bowl’ Ever“This was the first Super Bowl ever where I had to yell, ‘Be quiet — I’m trying to hear the poem!’” Kimmel said.Jimmy Kimmel joked that it seemed unfair for Tom Brady to win his seventh Super Bowl ring when there were still Americans who hadn’t yet gotten their first.Credit…ABCFeb. 9, 2021, 1:55 a.m. ETWelcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The Brady BunchLate-night hosts weighed in Monday night on Super Bowl LV, noting how the big game was palpably different this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Jimmy Kimmel referred to it as “the weirdest Super Bowl” ever.“This was the first Super Bowl ever where I had to yell, ‘Be quiet — I’m trying to hear the poem!’” Kimmel said.“One thing that was not normal, but was beautiful, was the pregame performance from the breakout star of Joe Biden’s inauguration, poet Amanda Gorman, who recited an original poem. It was the most exciting pregame poetry recital since Robert Frost kicked off the action at Super Bowl I.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Why aren’t we off today? The one thing I was hoping Donald Trump would accomplish is getting us Super Bowl Monday off. He had four years — nothing!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in last night’s Super Bowl, and look, I know it’s hard to win back-to-back Super Bowls, but honestly, J. Lo should have gotten the chance to try.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, today in Boston, fans are happy for Brady but sad that he left the Patriots, which probably explains Sam Adams’s new beer, Sam Adams’s Bittahsweet Teahs.” — JIMMY FALLON“Seriously, the game was such a dud. I watched it from home and I still left early to beat traffic.” — JIMMY FALLON“At a certain point, even Buccaneers fans were like, ‘Just end the game so we can get to Queen Latifah.’” — JIMMY FALLON“And how about Tom Brady winning his seventh Super Bowl ring? At this rate, he’s gonna be the first player with a Super Bowl toe ring, people.” — TREVOR NOAH“I don’t know if they mentioned this, but Tom Brady won his seventh ring at a time when there are a lot of people in this country who don’t even have one Super Bowl ring.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I mean, at this point Tom Brady has led the kind of life that 8-year-olds narrate to themselves in their backyard: ‘The crowd goes wild! Tommy wins his seventh Super Bowl! And now he’s rich and he’s married to a supermodel! And now he’s riding a dinosaur — rawr!’” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Brady has cemented his place on the sports Mount Rushmore, alongside Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and that fan who took a home run ball to the chest to save his beers.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Tampa Fans Edition)“What a weekend for the people of Tampa. Forty-eight hours of nonstop drinking and partying in the streets — and then the Super Bowl.” — JIMMY FALLON“Tampa Bay fans were not taking precautions. Last night, they had a huge, mostly maskless celebration while I was eating nachos through my N95.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“While the teams did their best to make the game itself safe-ish, the after-party on the streets of Tampa was a different story. Because following the Bucs’ blowout victory, hordes of maskless fans partied hearty, in a foolhardy display that can only be described as ‘Florida.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, they partied hard in Tampa. One girl was so drunk, she made out with the Vince Lombardi hologram.” — JIMMY FALLON“You know, health officials are frustrated because they’ve spent the whole last year trying to educate people about the importance of masks and social distance. Unfortunately, explaining science to people from Florida is like explaining Zoom to your turtle.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers’s “A Closer Look” on Monday Night delved into the G.O.P.’s continual dismissal of Trump’s second impeachment.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightWanda Sykes will pop by Tuesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutJessica FloresCredit…via Jessica FloresThe Comedian and improv performer Jessica Flores uses humor to demystify hearing loss and dispel myths about deaf people.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Weeknd Emerges From the Shadows at the Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReviewThe Weeknd Emerges From the Shadows at the Super Bowl Halftime ShowIn a year shaped by the coronavirus, a pop star with an affection for the grandeur and sheen of the biggest 1980s pop found a way to make a large affair small.The Weeknd performed a career-spanning set at the Super Bowl halftime show, but he was mostly confined to the stands.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 7, 2021For almost all of his decade-long career, the Weeknd has been finding ever more ornate ways to duck the spotlight, becoming immeasurably famous and popular while maintaining a cool, skeptical and effective remove from the harsh, sometimes goofy spotlight of fame.Out on the stage at the Super Bowl halftime show, though, there isn’t much one can do to hide. It is a locale that flattens nuance, sandpapers intent. It’s live and heavily vetted. For someone whose songs often dive deep into traumatic and provocative subject matter, but gleam so brightly and convincingly that it’s easy to miss the brittle soul within, it is an unlikely, almost vulnerable place to find yourself.Which probably explains why, at Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the Weeknd rejiggered the terms of the performance. What would ordinarily be a hyperchoreographed spectacle with countless moving parts was instead something more focused and, at times, unnervingly intimate. Even though his music tends toward the maximalist, the Weeknd found several ways to make the performance appear small, a kind of secret whispered in front of an audience that tops 100 million.In a performance clearly designed for at-home consumption, he focused intently on the cameras. Behind him was a band and a choir interspersed among a neon cityscape, and often he was surrounded by dancers — their faces bandaged, in keeping with the fame-skeptic iconography of his recent music videos — but often, the Weeknd stood alone. His eye contact was intense. When he danced, he mostly did so in isolation. In the midst of a pyrotechnic affair, there he was, keeping his own time.That was also partly the result of the unique circumstances of the event this year: a grand-scaled affair reimagined with pandemic restrictions in mind. Rather than the usual stage setup — assembled at midfield, then rapidly disassembled after the show — the Weeknd performed largely from the stands, only descending to the field for the final few minutes of his set.Wearing a glittery red blazer and spectator shoes with an all-black ensemble, he sometimes appeared like a cabaret mayor, a master of ceremony for a space-age function. He stuck to the biggest of his many big hits. “Starboy” was vibrant, and “The Hills” had a majestic sweep.After “The Hills,” he pivoted to something more peculiar, walking into an overlit labyrinth and performing “Can’t Feel My Face” amid a scrum of face-bandaged look-alikes. The camera was hand-held and unsteady, communicating a glamorous mayhem that this event usually doesn’t dabble in.Afterward, he tempered the mood with some of his biggest-tent hits: the sunshiny “I Feel It Coming,” the oversized “Save Your Tears” and then “Earned It,” his theatrical ballad from the “Fifty Shades of Grey” soundtrack.The Weeknd took the field only for the finale, “Blinding Lights.”Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThere could perhaps be no more fitting moment for the Weeknd to be headlining the halftime show: After almost a year of avoiding other people, who better to set the terms of public engagement than pop music’s greatest hermit? That said, it was jarring this week to watch him poke his head out from the shadows, engaging in a terse, not wholly comfortable news conference, and yuk-yuking in a comedy sketch with James Corden.There are some responsibilities of this level of fame that aren’t negotiable. Asked at the news conference whether he would temper his songs or performance in any way, given how lurid and graphic his recent videos have been, the Weeknd insisted, “We’ll keep it PG for the families, definitely.”Which is to say, there was no mischief injected onto one of pop music’s grandest, most-viewed and most scrutinized stages — take, for example, the raw carnal provocations of Prince’s 2007 rain-shellacked performance, or the fire-eyed political radicalism of Beyoncé’s takeover of Coldplay’s tepid set in 2016, or M.I.A.’s middle finger in 2012.Mostly, as promised, he kept it PG, though he did toss in a sly grin and a tiny sashay of the hip during “I Feel It Coming,” and the scattered mayhem during “Can’t Feel My Face” suggested far more sinister things than could be represented. His recent music videos have focused on the grotesquerie of celebrity worship, but that narrative was nodded to but largely sidelined.This is the second halftime show produced in part by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, in an arrangement struck while the league was trying to address fallout from its handling of Colin Kaepernick’s racial justice protests. In recent years, the N.F.L. has seemingly perpetually been in crisis-response mode. This season was consistently challenged by the impact of the coronavirus.Before the game, the rock-soul singer H.E.R. performed “America the Beautiful,” injecting some Prince-minded guitar filigree. And the national anthem was a duet between the phenomenally gifted soul singer Jazmine Sullivan and the country stoic Eric Church, wearing a purple moto-esque jacket as if to overemphasize the political and cultural middle ground the performance — sturdy, sometimes impressive — was so clearly striving for.In the Weeknd, the N.F.L. opted for one of the few unimpeachable pop stars of the past decade, a consistent hitmaker with an ear for contemporary production and an affection for the grandeur and sheen of the biggest 1980s pop.Only during the last couple of minutes, when he finally emerged onto the field, did he acknowledge just how far he had come. Playing at that moment was a snippet of “House of Balloons,” the murky title song from his extremely murky debut mixtape, released a decade ago. At that point, the Weeknd was a total cipher, a Toronto miscreant with an ethereal voice and zero interest in sharing himself with the rest of the world.This nod to his past was quick — a wink for longtime fans — and it gave way to “Blinding Lights,” his exuberant smash from 2019, which topped the Hot 100 for four weeks. It’s a sterling song that evokes both an idyllic future and triggers aural sense memories of mega-pop’s glory years. On the field, he was surrounded by hundreds of Weeknd-alike dancers. In the beginning, he moved with them in lock step. But as the song swelled, and the dancers began to swarm in odd patterns, the Weeknd moved in his own rhythm, holding the camera’s gaze, alone amid the chaos.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More