During a recent appearance on fitness entrepreneur Dolvett Quince’s “Workout the Doubt” podcast, hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre revealed his concerns about performing at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show until he spoke to JAY-Z and Nas.
“I was absolutely concerned about that,” he admitted. “I actually called a couple of close friends and said, ‘Listen, I’m gonna pull out.'”
The 57-year-old rap icon added that his reason was because he didn’t want to appear as a sellout. “‘I’m not going to 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**king sellout or something like that.'”
However, after talking with JAY-Z and Nas, Dre decided to continue with the performance.
“I got on the phone with Nas. He called me up and said, ‘Yo bro’ — you know, Nas has that voice — ‘Yo bro, you gotta do it. You have to do this. It’s going to be so powerful for f**king hip hop, for the culture, for you, for L.A. and the whole nine.'”
He continued, “We were on the phone for like 10 minutes, and he talked me into doing it. Nas and JAY-Z were big reasons why I decided to do the show.”
Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, and Anderson .Paak performed alongside Dr. Dre at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium to support the Los Angeles Rams’ 32-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. The performance received five nominations at the 2022 Primetime Emmy Awards.
Snoop Dogg previously revealed that JAY-Z threatened to quit his role as the NFL‘s live music entertainment strategist if Dre and company did not perform at the Super Bowl.
“We love each other,” Snoop told TIDAL this past March. “Like, not secretly, like publicly, we love each other. It is what it is, so it’s like for him to go to bat for us and tell the NFL, ‘F**k that. They perform, or I quit,’ that was the most gangster s**t out of everything.”
Watch the clip from Dr. Dre’s interview below.
Dr Dre’s impression of Nas’s voice tho😂🙌 #hiphop #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/3MHN10syxf
— Daniel D-dot 🇲🇼 (@DanielDdot1) August 16, 2022