For years, Jay-Z has been the man deciding who gets the biggest stage in American music. Now, according to Puck News, he may have picked himself.
Multiple sources told the outlet that Jay-Z will headline the Super Bowl LXI halftime show. Puck also reports that Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus were considered for the gig before the decision landed back at Jay’s own front door.
That detail is what makes this story so strange and so fun. Since 2019, Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation has worked with the NFL as its live music entertainment strategist, a role that comes with a big say over who plays halftime. So the guy holding the keys appears to have handed them to himself.
The track record behind that role is hard to wave away. Under the partnership, the halftime slot has gone to Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, The Weeknd, the Dr. Dre lineup with Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent, then Rihanna, Usher, Kendrick Lamar as headliner, and Bad Bunny for Super Bowl LX.
Then there’s the history fans will bring up immediately. On “APES**T,” from Everything Is Love, his 2018 joint album with Beyoncé, Jay rapped that he said no to the Super Bowl, a line widely read as support for Colin Kaepernick. A year later he was in business with the league, and that turn drew real criticism at the time.
Supporters saw it differently then and will likely see it differently now. Roc Nation framed the deal around pushing the NFL’s Inspire Change social justice initiative, and Jay argued publicly that it was time to move from protest into action.
Headlining the show himself would put that argument on the field in front of one of the biggest TV audiences of the year.
The musical case is easy to make. Jay-Z has a catalog stretching back to Reasonable Doubt in 1996, loaded with stadium sized records like “Empire State of Mind,” “99 Problems” and “Run This Town.” Somehow, he has never headlined a Super Bowl halftime show.
The skeptics will point straight at the optics. Choosing yourself over Bieber and Cyrus, two pop names with enormous reach, invites fair questions about how the selection process works when the person curating it is also a candidate.
For now, this is Puck’s reporting built on unnamed sources, and there’s been no official announcement.
Super Bowl LXI is set for early 2027, which leaves plenty of time for confirmation, denials or a surprise twist. If it holds, the conversation shifts fast from who’s playing to who Jay-Z brings out with him.
