Jay-Z to Headline Super Bowl Halftime: The Rebel the NFL Bought

On Monday the NFL named Jay-Z as headliner for this season's Super Bowl halftime show. His company, Roc Nation, already produces the show under a 2019 deal reportedly worth $5m a year, extended for another five years in 2024. Commissioner Roger Goodell said his one request when the partnership began was that Jay-Z "take the stage myself one day" — or, as the source puts it, "take the stage himself one day."

The announcement closes a circle that began with a public refusal. On the 2018 track Apeshit, Jay-Z bragged about turning down the Super Bowl and told the NFL it needed him more than he needed it. Months later, in June 2019, Forbes named him hip-hop's first billionaire. A few months after that, Roc Nation signed with the league.

What changed between the refusal and the deal?

The Kaepernick episode sits at the center of it. Jay-Z wore Colin Kaepernick's jersey on Saturday Night Live in 2017, after the quarterback's kneeling protests against police brutality, and dedicated The Story of OJ to him onstage. At the 2019 news conference announcing the NFL partnership, the tone shifted: "We've moved past kneeling," Jay-Z said. That same year, Kaepernick settled his collusion grievance against the league after saying the protests had effectively ended his playing career.

Kaepernick's verdict, as he later recalled his words to Jay-Z: "I just want you to know, one, you're serving the culture up to a bunch of racists and, two, they don't care about you. You're the music guy to them. They quite literally need a Black face — and have said as much."

The 2019 deal also put Roc Nation to work on Inspire Change, the league's social justice initiative. The record there is contested. In 2021, USA Today's Mike Freeman wrote: "There isn't a single, tangible thing you can point to that shows Jay-Z helping with the league's social justice efforts." That judgment may be a little unfair — Inspire Change has funnelled millions into charities across America. But the league's structure is unchanged: there is still no Black majority owner among its 32 teams, which Forbes now values at more than $300bn combined.

The symbols have moved in the same direction. In 2025, Donald Trump — who once called protesting NFL players "sons of bitches" — became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. That same week, the league pulled the "End Racism" slogan from the endzones in New Orleans. The phrase had appeared on NFL fields since 2020 as part of Inspire Change.

What does this change for the audience?

Jay-Z's own story explains his usefulness to the league. Shawn Carter grew up in Brooklyn's Marcy Houses, sold crack as a teenager, hawked CDs from his car trunk after labels passed, and released Reasonable Doubt in 1996 on his own label, Roc-A-Fella. "Nobody would sign me," he said later. By 2013 he was performing Picasso Baby, a track about the paintings he wanted to own, for six hours at a Chelsea gallery, with Marina Abramović joining him. Forbes puts his fortune at about $2.8bn.

The bootstraps narrative sells, but the country it sells to has deteriorated. SNAP enrollment fell more than 13% in a year as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tightened eligibility. Only 63% of adults say they could cover a surprise $400 expense.

The feud with Kaepernick has not cooled. This summer Jay-Z partnered with Target, the chain many Black customers boycotted after it rolled back its diversity and inclusion policies; Kaepernick refused to let his memoir be sold in its stores. At a July concert at Yankee Stadium, Jay-Z rapped: "Buddy took a check, I ain't even mad at him, but along with that check you have to sign a non-disparagement. I'm the one [the NFL] can't control." Sources close to Kaepernick have denied the claim.

Conservative media have read the booking accurately. A Daily Wire column hailed Jay-Z as a "legend" and assured readers there would likely be no anti-ICE activists onstage, adding that "after last year's Bad Bunny debacle, Jay-Z offers a compromise."

The NFL is Roc Nation's client, and the team owners are its partners. Whatever Jay-Z says from the halftime stage, he is unlikely to say it against the people who pay him.