At the Super Bowl, Nostalgia’s the Only Game
The New York Times
When the present is divisive and the future is scary, pop culture’s biggest event plays “remember when.”
“This is the millennium of Aftermath.” When Dr. Dre rapped that line on “Forgot About Dre,” from his 1999 album “2001,” he was referring to his record label. But from the vantage point of the 2022 Super Bowl, where he headlined the halftime show, it was also a pretty accurate forward-looking statement.
The big game, its spectacles, its ads and its trappings all shared a sense of looking backward — a nostalgia-saturated attitude that we were living in the aftermath of the best times, and that it was more comforting to look to the past than to the future.
This is not a knock on Dr. Dre, or the incendiary legends-of-hip-hop show he put on. For the game to finally center America’s biggest music genre in front of America’s biggest audience was overdue and thrilling.
