NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna will take center stage during the Super Bowl halftime show in February.
The singer, who declined to perform at the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, will headline Super Bowl 2023, the NFL with Roc Nation and Jay-Z’s Apple Music announced on Sunday. . Rihanna posted an image on Instagram of an outstretched arm holding an NFL football.
“Rihanna is a generational talent, a woman of humble beginnings who exceeded expectations at every turn,” Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, of whom Roc Nation serves as an executive producer on the show, said in a statement. “A person born on the small island of Barbados who became one of the most prominent entertainers of all time. Self-taught in business and entertainment.
The Super Bowl will take place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on February 12. After years of sponsorship by Pepsi, the next halftime show will be sponsored by Apple Music.
Rihanna said earlier that she turned down a similar opportunity for the 2019 Super Bowl which was eventually headlined by Maroon 5. At the time, many artists expressed their support for Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback of San Francisco whose 2016 national anthem protests sparked debate throughout football.
“I couldn’t dare to do that. Why?” Rihanna told Vogue in 2019. “Who benefits? Not my people. I just couldn’t be sold. I couldn’t be an enabler. There are things within this organization with which I totally disagree with, and I wasn’t about to go and do them any favors in any way,” she said of the league.
With sales of over 250 million records worldwide, Rihanna ranks among the best-selling female artists of all time. His last album was “Anti” in 2016.
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