Mary J. Blige and her glittery boots showed up to the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show and brought the damn house down.
As someone who solely watches the Super Bowl for the commercials and the halftime show performances, I wasn’t feeling overly hopeful after the first half of the Super Bowl LVI broadcast served me enough crypto and mediocre beer advertisements to last a lifetime (and also far too many commercials that made me say, “what and who the fuck was that for?” out loud to no one).
This year’s much anticipated halftime show, which should have been branded as, “Gen Xers and Millennials, We Did This For You,” was stacked with legendary performers including Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, and, of course, Mary J. Blige.
Snoop and Dre opened the show with “The Next Episode” and “California Love” which transitioned to 50 Cent giving us 2003 vibes with “In Da Club.” Then, we got our dear Ms. Blige. Performing “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” Blige looked extremely hot in flowing blonde hair, a glittering, mirror-paneled romper and matching thigh-high boots.
Independent of her absolutely banging bod, Blige brought the fire with high-energy, a feral scream, and a death drop that I, a full two decades younger than Blige, could not do without landing myself in the hospital. Her appearance was widely celebrated on social media both during and immediately after she left the stage.
Post-Blige, Lamar performed his hit “Alright”—the protest song of the Black Lives Matter Movement—surrounded by dancers wearing sashes that said, “Dre Day,” an homage to Dr. Dre’s landmark album The Chronic. He was followed by Eminem who delivered his iconic song, “Lose Yourself.” Em also took a note from Colin Kaepernick’s book and knelt alongside Dre, who played some notes of his song “Still Dre” on the piano. The performance closed with the artists all gathering together.
In its entirety, this show was easily one of the best the Super Bowl has seen in recent history, seated up in the top five of all time with The Weeknd’s performance last year and Prince’s rain-soaked magnum opus in 2007. Cheers to everyone involved tonight, but mostly Blige and her perfect ferocity.