Super Bowl Halftime: Rap Star Says They Were Snubbed for Performance With Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg

Months after Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar sent social media alight with their Super Bowl 2022 halftime performance, another popular rap star is speaking out about the history-making show. Appearing on the new I Am Athlete podcast on YouTube, Compton, California rapper The Game admitted he felt “snubbed” when he wasn’t asked to join the roster of performers.

The Game addressed his snub in a sneak peek for an upcoming episode of the podcast. Speaking with hosts co-hosts Brandon Marshall, Pacman Jones, and Nick ” Swaggy P” Young that since Super Bowl LVI, between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, and the halftime show took place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, only West Coast artists should have been tapped for the coveted halftime show.

“We on the West Coast are the only motherf-ers who have this crab-in-a-barrel mentality, where we wanna keep n- down. Snoop Dogg was there because he’s safe and he’s a legend,” the musician shared, per XXL Mag. “Snoop is icon. Dre is icon. Em is an icon, but Em is not from L.A. 50 is not from L.A. I’m not taking away from the fact that they were on the Super Bowl, but L.A. n- wouldn’t have been in the Detroit Super Bowl or New York Super Bowl. It just wouldn’t have happened.”

The rapper said he believes he was snubbed from the halftime show because he wasn’t a “safe artist” for the event, adding, “I didn’t get the call. I was hurt by that.” However, Snoop Dogg previously revealed that The Game wasn’t added to the lineup due to time constraints. The halftime show performance lasts just 12 minutes, and with five performers already on the roster, that meant each only had about three minutes to perform. Adding a sixth person to the lineup would have decreased that time even further.

Despite the apparent snub, the musician still offered plenty of praise for the performance, which marked the first all-hip hop Super Bowl halftime performance. On the podcast, The Game called the 2022 halftime show “amazing and a win for the culture as a whole.”

The 2022 Super Bowl halftime show took place back on Feb. 13. When the lineup was announced months prior, Todd Kaplan, VP of Marketing, Pepsi said in a press release, “Artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were at the forefront of the West Coast hip hop revolution, so to be able to bring them back to LA, where it all began alongside Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar will prove to be an epic, unforgettable celebration of the impact hip hop has today.