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,” Jay-Z, 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 ultimately headlined by Maroon 5. At the time, many artists expressed their support for Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback from San Francisco who protested police brutality against blacks and minorities by taking a knee. during the national anthem in 2016.
“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.
Kaepernick accused the NFL of colluding to keep him out of the league in a case that was finally settled in early 2019.
In 2019, the NFL partnered with Roc Nation (which manages Rihanna) to help pick Super Bowl performers and strategize for the halftime show. The widely acclaimed 2022 halftime show starred Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige.
With sales of over 250 million records worldwide, Rihanna ranks among the best-selling female artists of all time. Her last album was “Anti” in 2016. Rihanna last performed in public at the Grammy Awards in 2018.
In the years since, Rihanna has occasionally teased her musical comeback. Earlier this year, she had her first child with rapper ASAP Rocky.
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