Lil Wayne says he’s ‘devastated’ by not being chosen to perform at the Super Bowl

Lil Wayne says the NFL’s decision to make Kendrick Lamar the headliner of the upcoming Super Bowl Halftime show “broke” him.

Recently, the NFL, Apple Music, and Roc Nation announced Kendrick Lamar as the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime show headliner; an announcement that sparked mixed reactions on social media. While some fans rejoiced the “They Not Like Us” rapper’s appointment, others questioned the football conglomerate’s choice. 

Super Bowl LIX is scheduled to take place in New Orleans, Louisiana. The location of this year’s NFL championship led many fans to believe that the NFL and its partners would select New Orleans native Lil Wayne to perform at halftime. However, despite social media’s outrage, there is no long-standing precedent of the Halftime show headliner being from the city that’s hosting the Super Bowl on any given year. 

After fans and stars like Cam’ron, Nicki Minaj and Master P shared their disappointment at Lil Wayne’s halftime snub, the rapper broke his silence on the situation in an Instagram post. Sharing a video with his 19 million followers, Lil Wayne got vulnerable, claiming that the Super Bowl news “broke” him.

Recommended Stories

“First of all, I want to say forgive me for the delay. I had to get strength enough to do this without breaking,” he said in the video. “I’mma say thank you to every voice, every opinion, all the care, all love and support out there. Your words turned into arms and held me up when I tried to fall back.” 

The rapper went on to explain that “it hurt a lot,” not to be tapped to perform at the Super Bowl in his hometown. 

“That hurt…I blame myself for not being mentally prepared for a letdown. And for automatically mentally putting myself in that position like somebody told me that was my position,” he added. “So I blame myself for that. But I thought that was nothing better than that spot and that stage and that platform in my city, so it hurt. It hurt a whole lot.”

Earlier this year, the rapper expressed his interest in taking the Super Bowl Halftime stage on an episode of the “4HUNNID” podcast hosted by West Coast rapper YG. 

“I will not lie to you, I have not got a call,” Wayne told the podcast host. “But we all praying, we keeping our fingers crossed. I’m working hard. I’m going to make sure this next album and everything I do is killer, so I’m going make it very hard for them to…I want to just make it hard for them not to highlight the boy.”

Despite his disappointment in the decision, Wayne praised his loyal fanbase and industry colleagues for their outcries of support. 

“But y’all are f–king amazing. It made me feel like s–t not getting this opportunity and when I felt like s–t, you guys reminded me that I ain’t s–t without y’all… and that’s an amazing reality,” he concluded. “So, like I said, it broke me and I’m just trying to put me back together. But my God, have you all helped me. Thanks to all of my peers, my friends, my family, my homies on the sports television and everybody repping me. I really appreciate that, I really do. I feel like I let all of y’all down by not getting that opportunity, but I’m working on me and I’m working. So thank you.”

!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}();