One of the best half-time shows yet? Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg bring California love to Super Bowl

It was the question on everyone’s mind during this year’s Super Bowl half-time show: will the 2Pac hologram make an appearance? Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. But we did get 50 Cent performing upside down. And mum’s spaghetti. And it was beautiful.

Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg perform at Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.Credit: Getty Images

Taking place at Los Angeles’ slick SoFi Stadium in Inglewood (up to no good), and featuring an instantly iconic line-up led by pioneering West Coast hip-hop legends Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg, this year’s spectacle was always set to be a hometown tribute to the city’s world-conquering G-funk.

But if the unspecified goal was to embarrass the NFL over the, let’s face it, inconceivably bizarre fact that Monday’s performance marked the first time in the Super Bowl’s history that hip-hop artists have headlined the half-time show (I mean, even Maroon Five has done one of these!), well, mission accomplished.

On a set resembling the rooftops of Compton, with requisite lowriders parked curbside, Dre emerged from behind a monstrous mixing console to conduct the whole affair. If you didn’t know it yet, it was quickly obvious: the 56-year-old had a hand in more hits than most Pro Bowl linebackers. The set list itself made this one of the great half-time shows.

First there was Snoop, traipsing through his childhood bedroom, doing his laid-back thing over classics The Next Episode and Nuthin’ But a G Thang (thankfully, no Menulog jingle), and R&B legend Mary J. Blige belting out her Aftermath-era singles Family Affair and No More Drama with so much conviction she was flattened by the end.

LA’s reigning prince Kendrick Lamar reminded us how long we’ve been waiting for his follow-up to 2017’s Damn already, commanding a troupe of blonde doppelgangers with classics M.A.A.D City and It’s Alright. Those rumoured new songs didn’t appear, which in a sense is almost better: this was a celebration, not a sales opportunity.

And then there was Eminem, surrounded by a Busby Berkeley cast of prison convicts, taking a knee and getting into karaoke faves Forgot About Dre and Lose Yourself, and I imagine there’s a visible spike on the Richter scale at the exact moment everyone yelled “mum’s spaghetti” in unison.

There were also the requisite half-time show surprises: Dre protege 50 Cent popped up unannounced to deliver crowd-pleaser In Da Club while hanging upside down, a playful nod to the song’s music video, and Anderson .Paak, another more recent Aftermath alumnus, was there on drums throughout to bolster the next-generation vibes.

The whole thing was grand, it was fun, it was nostalgic, and, when Dre, behind the piano, started plinking about at Pac’s I Ain’t Mad At Cha, it was even a little bit emotional. Even without the hologram.

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