Photo Credit:Erika Goldring/Getty Images

Lil Wayne has made it clear he will never perform at the Super Bowl following the NFL’s decision to select Kendrick Lamar as the 2025 Halftime Show headliner. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, the rapper expressed disappointment over being passed up for the event in his hometown of New Orleans, calling the experience deeply hurtful.

“They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it. It was perfect,” Wayne said of the halftime opportunity. The 42-year-old shared that he had long dreamt of performing at the Super Bowl, particularly in front of his mother. “I said to myself, ‘I want to be onstage for the Super Bowl one day, in front of my mom.’ And I worked my a** off to get that f**kin’ position. It was ripped away from me.”

To increase his chances of being selected, Wayne took part in events he normally wouldn’t attend. “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*** with Tom Brady. That was all for that,” he said. “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.”

When the NFL announced Lamar as the Halftime Show performer in September 2024, Wayne expressed his heartbreak on social media, later elaborating, “It hurt a whole lot. But 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.”

Though he admitted to wishing Lamar well—“I’ve spoken to him and I wished him all the best and told him [he] better kill it”—Wayne didn’t tune in to watch the show. “Every time I looked, it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on,” he said, opting instead to play pool with Lil Twist and smoke outside. Reflecting on the performance, Wayne remarked, “They coulda had some music. But instead they got rappin’.”

Despite contacts from the NFL later apologizing and claiming they weren’t in charge of the selection, Wayne remains disillusioned. “All of a sudden, according to them, they got curved,” he said. “So, I’m going to have to just settle with whatever they say.”

Ultimately, Wayne has chosen to close that chapter: “It was perfect. I don’t want to do it.”