Twenty-twenty two goes down as the first year hip hop headlined the Super Bowl. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar shut down the half-time stage each performing their classic hits. Dr.Dre even had unannounced guest, 50 Cent, grace the stage performing his 2003 banger “In da Club”. The unforgettable show landed them as Emmy-winning recipients in the ‘Outstanding Live Variety Special’ category.
On a recent appearance on Apple Music with Ebro Darden, Nadeska Alexis and Lowkey, Dr. Dre revisited his award winning Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show performance.
Ebro: What knowledge should fans know about the preparation of this halftime performance?
Dr.Dre: The process of putting this together made me extremely nervous. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that nervous before. I don’t know if I ever looked forward to a Monday morning before (laughs). We had a good time, but there are a lot of people you have to depend on. You’re talking about 3,000 people you have to depend on for a 13 minute show. It’s an extreme amount of pressure. But when it’s finally done, it feels like goosebumps.
Nadeska: How far in advance did you and the team start preparing for the show?
Dr.Dre: It was around 8 weeks, don’t quote me. But there wasn’t a lot of time to put this together. My friend Dave Free was a big asset. He was the one that hit me and said ‘Yo Dre this can’t look like a regular show, this needs to look like a play’. So he got my wheels turning and was the motivating factor to get us to build the stage the way it looked.
Nadeska: If Rihanna were to ask you for advice, what would you tell her?
Dr.Dre: Put the right people around you and have fun. She might want to look at some of the people we used for our show (Fatima Robinson, Adam Blackstone). They made the work easy and fun as well.