NEW YORK — Rihanna will take center stage at February’s Super Bowl halftime show.
The singer, who declined to perform in the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show out of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, will headline the 2023 Super Bowl, the NFL announced Sunday along with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and Apple Music. Rihanna shared an Instagram photo of a hand reaching out to hold an NFL football.
“Rihanna is a generational talent, a woman of humble beginnings who has surpassed expectations at every turn,” Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, whose Roc Nation is an executive producer of the show, said in a statement. “A person born on the small island of Barbados who became one of the most prominent artists ever. Self-made in business and entertainment.”
State Farm Stadium will host the Super Bowl in Glendale (Arizona) on February 12. After years of Pepsi’s sponsorship, the upcoming halftime show will be sponsored by Apple Music.
Rihanna previously said that she rejected a similar opportunity to headline the 2019 Super Bowl. Maroon 5 was chosen instead. Numerous artists supported Kaepernick’s former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, whose protests against the national anthem in 2016 sparked controversy throughout the football world.
“I couldn’t dare do that. For what?” Rihanna told Vogue in 2019. “Who gains from that? My people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way,” she said of the league.
Rihanna is one of the most successful female artists with more than 250,000,000 records sold worldwide. Her last album was 2016’s “Anti.”
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