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Photo: Apple Music
Jay-Z will headline the Super Bowl LXI halftime show in Inglewood on February 14, 2027, and for the first time he will be the one performing rather than the one choosing who fills it. The news came at the break of a Monday Night Football game between the Eagles and the Cowboys on October 26, and the statement that came with it began with his debut album. "From Reasonable Doubt to standing on the Super Bowl Halftime stage, this has been a journey. Thirty years of music, work, and culture on the world's biggest stage. This run continues to be a dream come true," he wrote.
The announcement came from the NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation, which has produced the show every year since 2020, and it came with a short black-and-white film of him sitting in the stands of the empty stadium, ringed by goats, set to "Public Service Announcement (Interlude)", under a caption that reads "GOAT's out of the bag". Roc Nation will executive produce the telecast, Hamish Hamilton will direct it as he has every year since 2010, and the game airs on ESPN, a first for the network, with ABC returning after more than two decades.
Until now, the names on that bill came out of his own taste. The first show the company staged went to Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020, and after them came The Weeknd, a Dr. Dre homecoming in 2022, Rihanna, Usher, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny, who was there in February 2026. His own show will be the eighth under the partnership, and the man who has spent those years choosing the headliner will now be the one on the stage.
The tour he built around thirty years since his debut ended two days before the announcement, with two nights in Inglewood on October 23 and October 24, after three July dates at Yankee Stadium and stops in London and Paris. The first of those nights brought out John Legend, DJ Khaled and Scarface, with Blue Ivy Carter on piano, and the second closed it with a showcase that included Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Too $hort. The NFL commissioner later explained the timing, noting that Jay-Z was in the 30th anniversary year of his first album and had just finished his tour.
His own channel has been filling with the official lyric videos tied to the HBO series JAŸ-Z in 8, in which he and Rick Rubin take the catalog apart a chapter at a time. Rubin, who co-founded Def Jam with Russell Simmons, is making his documentary directing debut. Chapter six takes in "Threat", the 9th Wonder-produced track, where Jay-Z credits the 1990 mob film Goodfellas, and "99 Problems", the one Rubin produced, whose first verse came out of his fight with a radio station that would not play his new records. The last chapter ends on "Legacy", which he connects to questions of generational wealth and trauma, after a conversation about his role as an artist in challenging racism and inequality. The title follows the way he now writes his name, with the Y capped and an umlaut over it.
No guest has been announced yet, and the league has already started the guessing. "Anticipation as to who Jay-Z might have guest star at halftime for the big game will now kick off," the NFL said, adding that his wife, Beyoncé, will be atop the list, and that she headlined Super Bowl XLVII and guested at Super Bowl 50. The idea was Roger Goodell's long before the date was set. When the league first reached its agreement with Roc Nation to produce the show, he had one request, that Jay-Z perform it himself one day, whenever the moment felt right to him. The answer comes in February 2027, in front of a crowd that spent years wondering whether the man who chose the show would ever step into it himself.
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