Snoop Dogg crip walk was the highlight during the Super Bowl LVI halftime

The Super Bowl halftime show kicked off with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre's legendary song “The Next Episode.”

Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar gave a spectacular performance during the commercial break of NBC's game between the Rams and Bengals at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. [Sunday 13, 2022]

This year's Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl LVI 2022 halftime show was one of the best ever.

Dr. Dre delivered a spirited homage to his home city of Los Angeles, which included backup from West Coast rap legends Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar.

In a replica of different rooms, Dre took the stage behind the boards before Snoop rapped the hook of the 2001 hit “The Next Episode.”Then the two took to the roof for “California Love,” which featured aspects of the lyrics from Tupac Shakur's classic 2022 song. The show was clearly related to the California culture of the early 1990s.

Snoop Dogg displayed his affiliation even after the NFL asked him not to.

The Compton rapper Snoop was wearing a full blue bandana-pattern tracksuit and Crip walked all over the stage, flashing the Crip sign at the end of the show after being asked not to advertise his affiliation.

NFL regulations weren't just ignored by Snoop; Eminem and Dr. Dre were also lax.

Eminem dropped a knee and placed his head in his palm as his version of Lose Yourself came to a close, presumably in honor of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality during the 2016 season. After the quarterback's gesture, other players followed suit, resulting in major cultural controversy and criticism of the league's handling of the situation. Kaepernick hasn't played in the NFL since the end of the 2016 season, and it's commonly assumed that he was permanently banned by the league's teams and owners because of his political position.

In response to allegations on social media that the NFL did not approve of Eminem's intention to take a knee, a league spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter in a message sent after the halftime performance that this was not the case. The NFL representative remarked, “We watched all elements of the show during numerous rehearsals this week.”

When it came to putting up his set, Dr. Dre had a lot of back-and-forth difficulties. According to a person close to him, the hip-hop mogul felt “disgustingly censored.” Halftime show performers are typically unpaid, and TMZ claimed in January that Dre had put up his own money to organize the spectacle.

In the final song of the performance, Dr. Dre repeated an anti-cops lyric in his song “Still D.R.E.” 

A particular phrase in the rapper's hit song “Still D.R.E.” — “still not loving police” — was alleged to make the league uneasy since it did not want the performance to be a “divisive cultural war moment.”

Surprise guest 50 Cent

The surprise guest was 50 Cent, who sang the Dre-produced “In da Club” hit song upside down, mirroring a major scenario from the song's music video.

In a white and silver ensemble, Mary J.Blige sang her 2001 songs “Family Affair” and “No More Drama.”

On the rooftop, the R&B singer followed by Kendrick Lamar, performed “alright” in front of the structure with backing dancers wearing sashes that read “Dre Day.”

During Kendrick Lamar's famed song “Alright,” a protest song against police violence against Black people, the verse “And we hate po-po” was abruptly cut off. Throughout their songs, Lamar and the rest of the performers had been self-censoring some words, but it was unclear whether Lamar actually said the words “po-po” and the sound cut out at that exact moment. The camera wasn't on his face, so it was hard to tell if it was bleeped or self-censored.

Who won the Super Bowl game?

The Rams have won the Super Bowl for the second time in their history, and the first while based in Los Angeles, defeating the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in Super Bowl LVI.