The Super Bowl halftime show was a complete success.
However, there was a ton of controversy brewing online from several people who felt the show was sexual and provocative in nature. Charlier Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, was not a fan as he wrote, “The NFL is now the league of sexual anarchy,” he tweeted. “This halftime show should not be allowed on television.”
Days after performing the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, Grammy-winning singer Mary J. Blige stopped by the Hot 97 studio to have a long conversation about the career milestone. Blige was asled about the number of conservative viewers who were outraged over the hip-hop-oriented event, with some viewers claiming it was too sexual and provocative for family audiences.
“There’s definitely an energy around people feeling as if the performance at halftime was somehow, uh, it was too raunchy, or it was too real,” Ebro told Blige around the 21-minute mark, adding, “or, ‘How did these gangster rappers get on stage?’ Have you seen that conversation at all?”
“No, I haven’t,” she responded. “That’s a small conversation compared to how huge that is. Like, hip-hop is here. It’s more than just a small thing. It’s just as big as rock ‘n’ roll right now. I don’t pay attention to all of that. I’m just paying attention to how we got raised up. Someone looked at us—well, somebody looked at [Dr.] Dre and said, ‘We need you.’ And Dre looked at me and said, ‘I want you.’ And so on and so forth with all his friends. So, I really don’t care about [the backlash].”
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Days before the halftime show, Blige opened up about not getting paid for the performance, which she described as an “opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Listen, you’re gonna be paid for the rest of your life off of this,” she told The Cruz Show. “People are gonna be knocking at your doors. They don’t have to pay me, but if they was paying it would be a lot of money.”
