The singer, who declined to perform at the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, will headline the 2023 Super Bowl, the NFL announced Sunday along with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and Apple Music. Rihanna posted a picture on Instagram of herself holding an NFL football in one arm.
“Rihanna is a generational talent, a woman of humble beginnings who has exceeded expectations at every turn,” Rock Nation said in a statement. “A man born on the small island of Barbados who became one of the most popular artists of all time. Self-made in business and entertainment.
The Super Bowl will be played on February 12 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. After years of Pepsi sponsorship, the upcoming halftime show will be supported by Apple Music.
Rihanna previously said she turned down a similar opportunity to perform at the 2019 Super Bowl with Maroon 5. At the time, many artists knelt for Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who protested police brutality against blacks and minorities during the national anthem in 2016.
“I couldn’t do that. Why?” Rihanna told Vogue in 2019. “Who’s going to benefit from that? It’s not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t turn it on. There are things in that organization that I absolutely do not agree with and I was not going to serve them in any way,” she said of the league.
They accused the NFL of colluding to force Kaepernick out of the league in a case that eventually settled in early 2019.
In the year In 2019, the NFL partnered with Roc Nation (which Rihanna manages) to help select performers for the Super Bowl and strategize the halftime show. The critically acclaimed 2022 halftime show features Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige.
With over 250 million records sold worldwide, Rihanna is one of the best-selling female artists of all time. Her last album was 2016’s “Anti”. Rihanna finally made her official debut at the 2018 Grammy Awards.
Since then, Rihanna has occasionally teased her musical comeback. She gave birth to her first child with rapper ASAP Rocky earlier this year.
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