Lil Wayne has vowed never to perform at the Super Bowl. In a new cover story for Rolling Stone, the 42-year-old got candid about his disappointment after being snubbed for the 2025 halftime show, where the headlining act went to Kendrick Lamar.
Lil Wayne will never perform at Super Bowl. Here’s why
“They stole that feeling,” Wayne told the outlet on Thursday, adding, “I don’t want to do it. It was perfect.” Earlier this year, the NFL championship was held in the Lollipop hitmaker’s hometown of New Orleans.
Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr, has long hoped to perform during a Super Bowl halftime show, he confessed to the outlet in a past interview. Being passed over this year “broke” him inside, the Love Me crooner admitted in a video.
While there was much hype around Lamar’s performance, Wayne did not watch the halftime show and instead played pool with his friend and fellow rapper Lil Twist. “Every time I looked,” he said, adding that “it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Wayne discussed his efforts to bag the gig, saying, “To perform, it’s a bunch of things they’re going to tell you to do and not do, a**es to kiss and not kiss.”
“If you notice, I was a part of things I’ve never been a part of. Like [Michael] Rubin’s all-white parties. I’m doing s**t with Tom Brady. That was all for that. You ain’t never seen me in them types of venues. I ain’t Drake. I ain’t out there smiling like that everywhere. I’m in the stu’, smokin’ and recording.”
After putting himself out there, Wayne was confident about being selected as the headliner. But then, Lamar was announced, and someone from the NFL told him, “We ain’t in charge” of the halftime show. “All of a sudden, according to them, they got curved,” he went on, adding, “So, I’m going to have to just settle with whatever they say.”
