Mary J. Blige is not getting paid for her Superbowl performance but she’s cool with that.
The Grammy-award-winning artist and actress will be performing alongside fellow hip-hip legends, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg as well as Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar. Neither of the headline performers will be paid for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, but it seems the opportunity overshadows the lack of a check. And the benefits appear, long after the game ends.
“Listen, you’re gonna be paid for the rest of your life off of this,” Blige said in a new interview with The Cruz Show, who confirmed that she and the others were performing unpaid. “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.”
She added, “Yeah, but, I’m good. This is major! This is the opportunity of a lifetime.” Over the years, Blige has made us cry, dance, and laugh with her. We’re looking forward to reliving some of those moments this Sunday during the halftime show.
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Snoop also understands the bigger picture. He called the upcoming performance a ‘dream come true’ and is looking to share the stage with his friends.
“For me, when performing, I never let the moment get bigger than me,” said Snoop Dogg in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “I’m not going to understand it until it happens,” he continued. “While it’s happening, I’m in the zone. I’m stuck to the script, laser-focused, being on point, sounding good, looking good, and feeling good. I want to give off a great presentation. After the fact, it’s when I’ll be nervous about watching it to see what the reaction is. But while I’m going through it, it’s nothing.”
It’s also an opportunity to give hip-hop the platform it deserves on the NFL level.
“We’re going to open more doors for hip-hop artists in the future and making sure that the NFL understands that this is what it should have been long time ago,” Dre said during a moderated appearance with the Associated Press with Blige and Snoop. “It’s crazy that it took all of this time for us to be recognized. I think we’re going to do a fantastic job. We’re going to do it so big that they can’t deny us anymore in the future.”
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History of unpaid Superbowl gigs
Not paying its Superbowl headline performers is nothing new for the NFL. According to Forbes, past performers such as Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, The Black Eyed Peas, Beyoncé, Prince, Bruno Mars, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake have not been paid. Shakira and Jennifer Lopez were put on a “union scale,” which is “a fraction of the six- and seven-figure sums” the artists usually earn regularly.
“We do not pay the artists. We cover expenses and production costs,” said NFL spokesperson Joanna Hunter to Forbes in 2016. As a matter of fact, Shakira and J.Lo’s 2020 performance reportedly cost the league, $13 million in production costs. But on the flip side, their song catalog sales went up nearly 900 percent, Billboard reported.
