Rap Takes Over Super Bowl Halftime, Balancing Celebration and Protest

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.