Usher Performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show Doesn’t Erase the NFL’s Sins
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Over the weekend, Usher was announced as the headlining performer of the Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show in Las Vegas. With a catalog going back 30 years that includes 18 Top 10 hits (nine of which reached Number One), Usher is in many ways a no-brainer for the showcase. The halftime show is a rite of passage for American music’s top-tier stars, and Usher deserves to be in that pantheon.
Since the announcement, music fans have celebrated the R&B icon getting his figurative flowers, joking about what Y2K-era outfit they’ll wear during the game and speculating on his set list. Usher follows Rihanna, the Dr. Dre family tree (with Mary J. Blige), the Weeknd, as well as Shakira and Jennifer Lopez as acts selected by Roc Nation since their partnership with the NFL began in 2019. Some are overjoyed to see so many Black acts on the prime-time stage when just three of the previous 10 Super Bowl performers before the agreement were Black. That lack of diversity shifted after the NFL partnered with Roc Nation, a move widely seen as a response to the veritable blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, who hasn’t been on an NFL roster since 2017.
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In 2015, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback began kneeling during the national anthem at games in response to police brutality (police had killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castille earlier that year), telling reporters, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.” He soon inspired other players to join him in his silent protest, creating a PR crisis for the league. People began highlighting the racial disparities among the NFL’s ownership and coaching ranks. In 2014, Reuters deemed the NFL “the last bastion for white male conservatives” because of its then-83-percent white and 64-percent male demographic of fans. Their dismay at the protests played a part in the league suffering an eight percent ratings dip in 2016. The NFL was being ditched by conservatives who were upset by the protests with then-President Donald Trump going so far as to encourage fans to boycott the NFL in 2017.
Many athletes and celebrities stood with Kaepernick. NBA star Lebron James announced that he stood with Kaepernick in 2016, and the following year, Beyoncé thanked him for his “selfless heart” while giving him Sports Illustrated’s Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. Jay-Z was seemingly in solidarity with Kaepernick on 2018’s “APESHIT” when he rhymed, “I said no to the Super Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you.” He also discouraged Travis Scott from performing at Super Bowl LIII (though he later said it was because he wanted Travis to be a headliner). Rihanna passed on performing at the same event, noting she “couldn’t be a sellout.”
But despite Kaepernick’s cultural support, the league would appear to buckle to conservative fears. Kaepernick opted out of the last year of his 49ers contract in 2017, and he hasn’t been signed by another team since. That year All-Pro quarterback Aaron Rodgers said, “I think [Kaepernick] should be on a roster right now. I think because of his protests, he’s not.”
Kaepernick and former teammate Eric Reid filed a grievance with the NFL, alleging that owners colluded not to sign them because their presence would alienate their core fan base of conservatives. In February 2019, the case was confidentially settled (reportedly for a figure under $10 million), with lawyers stating that “there will be no further comment.” Two months later, the NFL announced their agreement with Jay-Z and Roc Nation on community initiatives and a plan to “spearhead and advise on the selection of artists for NFL tentpole performances, including the Super Bowl.” In a statement, Jay-Z said, “This partnership is an opportunity to strengthen the fabric of communities across America.” The league has been true to its word and given Roc Nation carte blanche on music performances, and they’ve partnered on choosing community initiatives to fund nationwide.
Jay-Z once rhymed that he didn’t need to partner with the NFL, but just a year later, he signed on and declared, “We’re past kneeling.” Kaepernick seemingly responded to Jay-Z in an August 2019 Instagram post, saluting Reid as well as NFL players Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson for having “never moved past the people and continu[ing] to put their beliefs into action.” Hova appeared to respond to critics of the deal on 2020’s “Flux Capacitor,” when he rapped, “Why would I sell out? I’m already rich, don’t make no sense/Got more money than Goodell, a whole NFL bench/Did it one-handed like Odell, handcuffed to a jail/I would’ve stayed on the sideline if they could’ve tackled that shit themselves.”
But as long as Kaepernick is unemployed by the league for the exact reasons that he’s protesting, his fight doesn’t appear to be “tackled.” Powerful entities like the NFL are good at finding the simplest, least controversial way to appease people of color when we rise up against injustice. Their constant need to clean up messes benefits the celebrity class, which often plays a role in helping rebrand corporations with a spectacle to overshadow mistreatment. While we rejoice over Super Bowl performers, the NFL is dealing with the same systemic issues that Kaepernick was protesting in 2016, including racist hiring practices and racial bias against Black quarterbacks.
While Rihanna was criticized for performing at 2023’s Super Bowl after previously refusing to, Usher hasn’t received much backlash for accepting the Super Bowl slot. Many view the moment as a crowning achievement for the iconic singer during a late-career renaissance. Usher’s Tiny Desk performance on NPR last year reminded people of his greatness, and his Vegas residency has been sold-out for two years straight, becoming the hottest show on the strip. The concert has repeatedly gone viral with clips of him singing to famous women, including Keke Palmer and Issa Rae. He seems to be one of the few veteran acts who knows how to use social media and the blogosphere to his benefit, and it may have played a part in his selection. While it will be great to see him take the same stage his idol Michael Jackson once did — and for the Chris Brown comparisons to cease once and for all — it’s unfortunate that the performance may be occurring as a consequence of the NFL deflecting from its dirty laundry.
The NFL had a ratings bonanza during this year’s opening weekend, with The Hollywood Reporter revealing that the league had more than 20 million viewers for Thursday Night Football (24.75 million viewers), CBS’ late-afternoon Sunday game (21.35 million), Sunday Night Football (20.18 million) and Monday Night Football (22.64 million). This is the first time that’s happened since 2015, the year Kaepernick’s protests began. Apparently, fans have relinquished their disdain for the league enough to continue watching. But the mere passage of time doesn’t change the fact that Kaepernick was done wrong and that the league still has too many markers of the good-ol’-boys’ club it’s always been. That’s not Jay-Z or Rihanna or Usher’s fault, but their decisions to work with the NFL don’t absolve the league of its racism. If Kaepernick’s story is accurately told decades from now, it will document the artists who the NFL used to sweeten the stench of their biggest racial blight — and the fans who let them do it. Let’s not give Roger Goodell the easy out.
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