Hip-Hop Comes to the Super Bowl - Ingles

Monday, February 07 2011

This was the season that hip-hop finally caught up to the N.F.L., something that happened weeks before the Black Eyed Peas took center stage at Cowboys Stadium for the Super Bowl XLV halftime show.

For months, the Pittsburgh Steelers have had their own unofficial fight song: “Black and Yellow,” by the young Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa. Hip-hop is generally far more associated with the slick N.B.A. than the surly N.F.L., but “Black and Yellow,” currently the No. 3 song on the Billboard pop singles chart, is the most significant football-related hip-hop song since “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” recorded by members of the 1985 Chicago Bears, who went on to win Super Bowl XX. (The less said of the rap catalog of the newly inducted Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, the better.)

That song figured heavily in pregame coverage of this year’s event, but the halftime show is sacred ground, choreographed to the second, stacked for maximum impact. Which meant that while hip-hop would get its say, it would be from the mouths of the Black Eyed Peas, the most denuded and hybridized of all hip-hop acts, and guaranteed appeasers of all demographics. They’re incontrovertible stars, and the ones most likely to deliver a frictionless performance.

Hip-hop had made cameos at the Super Bowl before. Queen Latifah was part of a Motown tribute during the halftime of Super Bowl XXXII, in 1998. Nelly has performed twice, for Super Bowl XXXV in 2001 (organized by MTV, it was the first youth-minded halftime show line-up), and for XXXVIII, in 2004, at which P. Diddy also performed, in what was the most hip-hop halftime show to date. (That was also the year of the wardrobe malfunction.)

But rap has always been a side dish, never the main course. So when the Black Eyed Peas — the rapper and producer will.i.am, the singer Fergie, the extras apl.de.ap and Taboo — descended onto the stage on platforms dangling from cables, dressed like a friendly alien delegation on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” it constituted a victory of a sort, even if it was a short-lived one.

The Black Eyed Peas began life a decade and a half ago as a socially conscious, dance-friendly underground hip-hop group and are now the ambassadors for hip-hop to the rest of the world. Their fundamental tenets remain, though — good cheer, movement, gauche taste — even as they churn out supersize, occasionless songs, at breakneck tempos, designed for maximum impact.

Theirs is music that works harder than the performers, which was a liability during the early part of the set, especially on “Boom Boom Pow,” one of the most limber pop songs in recent years, but which the group delivered largely standing still, letting the phalanxes of dancers around them do most of the work.

Those clusters of bodies were key. Unlike in previous years, in which fans were allowed on the field to suffocate the stage, this year there were hundreds of dancers in illuminated unitards helping round out the Black Eyed Peas’ space show. They formed arrows to direct the eye to action on the stage, and during “Where Is the Love?” formed hearts, lit up red and scattered across the field.

After two songs, Slash was inserted into the set-up for a jolt of arena rock, playing a crisp version of “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” dodging Fergie’s vocal and physical histrionics. That was for hip-hop novices, even though the Black Eyed Peas know how to service that audience on their own. They played “The Time (Dirty Bit),” which borrows from “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” (the theme from “Dirty Dancing”), and “Pump It,” which samples Dick Dale’s “Misirlou,” popularized in “Pulp Fiction.”

These are the group’s dimmest songs, the ones on which they pander the most. Stiffness aside, “Boom Boom Pow” was better, as was the relentless “I Gotta Feeling,” which opened and closed the set. The show peaked when Usher joined in, performing his hit “OMG,” which will.i.am produced and is featured on. But Usher’s spectacular choreography, including a high leap over a kneeling will.i.am, landing in a split, only ended up highlighting the headliners’ weaknesses.

Even amid these anonymous smash hits, it was hard not to think of “Black and Yellow,” a relaxed anthem of hometown pride pegged to the Steelers’ team colors, more or less: “Black and Gold” doesn’t have quite the same melodic punch. (The song works just fine for the Pirates and the Penguins, too, it should be noted: Pittsburgh is a chromatically narrow town.) Like any good fan, Wiz Khalifa pays tribute to his team, though in his case, it’s his car and diamonds that are decked in team colors.

Released in early September, “Black and Yellow” has risen hand in hand with the Steelers, who began playing the song at Heinz Field during the season, and who adopted it as their game-concluding song during the playoffs, playing it over the loudspeakers after home victories. Wiz Khalifa was invited to perform the song before the A.F.C. championship game last month. The video even features an appearance by Steelers outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley.“”

Last week the avowed cheesehead Lil Wayne released “Green & Yellow,” a feisty, if clunky rejoinder, in which he takes potshots at Ben Roethlisberger and Ike Taylor and muses, “Steel Curtain/ What is that, velvet?” It wasn’t the equal of the original, but it took some of the sting out of a partisan song.

Naturally, there’s a need for the N.F.L. to remain unbiased, preventing the performance of these songs during the halftime show. But this year more then ever, there was a ripe opportunity for an alternate halftime arrangement, official or otherwise, in which Wiz Khalifa and Lil Wayne could face off head to head. If puppies and lingerie-clad models can have their spin-off battles, why not rappers? Instead, Lil Wayne was watching the game from a luxury box. Wiz Khalifa, who had performed at an event in Dallas on Friday night, was in Las Vegas for a concert. It was an opportunity squandered. (source New York Times)