Jay-Z has chosen himself to perform the Super Bowl halftime show in Los Angeles during the big game in February 2027. In 2019, the rap legend’s entertainment company Roc Nation signed a deal with the NFL to curate and produce the annual halftime performance.

He had been the choice of many for 2027’s Super Bowl Halftime show over Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber following reports that the two musicians could perform. The Brooklyn rap icon has yet to release an album since “4:44” in 2017, which went double-platinum.

Still, his music continues to make waves, topping the charts. This latest development also follows the rapper’s successful 2026 run of live shows.

In July, he made $42 million from his two sold-out concerts at Yankee Stadium, and he took home $12 million for a sold-out show in Paris last month, according to Puck.

The Super Bowl halftime show is one of the most-watched global TV moments of the year, even though it has had some controversies. Around 120 million people tune in from around the world to watch the show with thrilling performances from some of the big names in music. The show can even be wilder than the actual game, fans say.

Certainly, the Super Bowl stage is iconic; however, not every musician would like to be on it.

Jay-Z himself, before agreeing to take the stage in 2027, turned down an offer to perform at the NFL Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2017 to show solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. In the “Apeshit” single off the Everything Is Love joint album with his wife, Beyoncé, the rapper threw some jabs at the NFL.

“I said no to the Super Bowl/ You need me, I don’t need you/ Every night we in the endzone/ Tell the NFL we in stadiums too,” he rapped.

In his final season with the San Francisco 49ers in 2016, Kaepernick famously knelt when the American national anthem was being played before games as a protest against racial discrimination.

Besides throwing his weight behind the player, Jay-Z also told the New York Times before Super Bowl LIV in 2020 that he turned down the offer because he was told to bring on Kanye West and Rihanna to join him on “Run this Town.”

“Of course I would have,” Jay-Z said to the outlet, “but I said, ‘No, you get me.’ That is not how you go about it, telling someone that they’re going to do the halftime show contingent on who they bring. I said forget it. It was a principle thing.”

Cardi B

The rapper also told the Associated Press that she refused to be on stage for the halftime show in 2019 out of solidarity with Kaepernick.

“My husband, he loves football,” Cardi, who was married to Offset at the time, explained. “He really wants to go to the Super Bowl, but he can’t go to the Super Bowl, because he’s got to stand for something.”

“There’s a man who sacrificed his job for us, so we got to stand behind him,” she said at the time.

Rihanna

The singer and entrepreneur also declined in 2018 for the same reason above. She told Vogue in 2019, “I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not 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.”

In 2023, when she agreed to perform, she explained why to British Vogue. “There’s still a lot of mending to be done in my eyes, but it’s powerful to break those doors, and have representation at such a high, high level and a consistent level.”

André 3000 (OutKast)

On the back of the huge success of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, OutKast was approached to perform at the 2004 halftime show. However, André 3000 refused to cut down or shorten their songs to fit the strict time limits.