A Super Bowl halftime show is nothing without a fun surprise: Lady Gaga jumping off of the roof of the stadium, Usher roller-skating, and now … Kendrick Lamar having Serena Williams crip-walk to a song in which he calls her ex-boyfriend a “pedophile.” You really never know what you’re gonna get!
After teasing it throughout, Lamar finally launched into “Not Like Us” toward the end of his set. The crowd went nuts, and then the next thing we knew, there was Serena Williams looking like she was having the time of her life dancing to the Drake diss track.
There are layers here. First of all, Williams and Lamar are both prodigies from Compton, so they already had that connection. Second, Williams and Drake were reportedly an item around 2015. Last summer, post–“Not Like Us” annihilation, the Canadian rapper released footage of him writing the 2016 song “Too Good.” In the video, he confirmed the track was about the tennis star. That song, if you’ve forgotten, goes, “I’m too good for you/I’m way too good for you/You take my love for granted/I just don’t understand it.” If your ex wrote that about you and then you got the opportunity to dance on his grave ten years later, wouldn’t you take it?
Another layer? Williams’s cameo might have served as a wink to the 2012 Summer Olympics, where she seemed to briefly crip-walk after defeating Maria Sharapova. Per The Guardian, this disturbed a bunch of pearl-clutching tennis snobs who were offended by the dance’s reported gang affiliations. When asked at the time if she regretted the celebration, Williams responded, “First of all, it was just a dance. I didn’t know that’s what it was called. Second, why are you asking me that?”
Following her Sunday night performance, Williams nodded to the callback. “Man, I did not crip-walk like that at Wimbledon,” she said in a backstage video posted to X. “Ooh, I would’ve been fined! It was all love.”
Williams wasn’t the only superstar cameo at Lamar’s halftime show. Samuel L. Jackson was there dressed as Uncle Sam and served as a master of ceremonies for the show. As was previously announced, SZA joined Lamar to perform “Luther” and “All the Stars.” As a bit of trivia, SZA also dated Drake back in 2009. If Lamar had convinced Rihanna to show up, I don’t know that we’d ever hear from Drake again.
This post has been updated.