Lil Wayne might be synonymous with New Orleans, but he won’t be at the Super Dome for the biggest night in sports on Sunday.
Lil Wayne said on social media earlier this week that he wouldn’t attend the Super Bowl in his hometown. The rapper, 42, has been outspoken about his disappointment in not being named the event’s headliner. There was a moment during the pregame performance Sunday that included a tribute to New Orleans music, and Lil Wayne wasn’t included.
When the Super Bowl announced rapper Kendrick Lamar as its halftime entertainment, fans and artists alike aired their grievances over what they saw as a slight to Lil Wayne. Even the five-time Grammy Award winner expressed his disappointment.
“I blame myself for not being mentally prepared for a letdown and for just automatically mentally putting myself in that position, like somebody told me that was my position,” Lil Wayne said on an Instagram live. “I thought there was nothing better than that spot, that stage, and that platform, in my city. So it hurt, it hurt a whole lot.” He also said on stage that he felt the experience was “ripped away from [him.]”
Lamar, who launched his career to new heights this year with a diss track about Drake, wasn’t afraid to reference the shade from Lil Wayne in a song. On the track “wacced out murals” from his November album “GNX,” he wrote: “Used to bump Tha Carter III, I held my Rollie chain proud. Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down.” (Tha Carter III is Lil Wayne’s 2008 album.)
Lamar also made a direct call out to those who said he shouldn’t have been named as the headliner at another point in the track: “Won the Super Bowl and Nas the only one congratulate me. All these (expletive) agitated. I’m just glad it’s on their faces. Quite frankly, plenty artist but they outdated. Old-ass flows tryna convince me that you they favorite.”
The day after the album was released, Lil Wayne posted on X: “Man wtf I do?! I just be chillin & dey still kome 4 my head. Let’s not take kindness for weakness. Let this giant sleep. I beg u all. No one really wants destruction,not even me but I shall destroy if disturbed. On me. Love.”
Since then, Lil Wayne and Kendrick have patched up their beef. “I’ve spoken to him, and I wished him all the best, and I told him he better kill it,” Wayne said in December on “The Skip Bayless Show.” (Wayne also said on the show it was his first time hearing those lyrics on “wacced out murals.”)
The rapper seems to have come full circle on the situation, making a commercial with the skincare company Cetaphil about being a “lil sensitive” and leaving a “seat to fill” at the game. The ad also teases Lil Wayne’s album, due out in June.
