You’re Nuts: Which Super Bowl halftime performer are you most excited for?

Everybody knows that one of the best parts of being a sports fan is debating and dissecting the most (and least) important questions in the sporting world with your friends. So, we’re bringing that to the pages of LGHL with our favorite head-to-head column: You’re Nuts.

In You’re Nuts, two LGHL staff members will take differing sides of one question and argue their opinions passionately. Then, in the end, it’s up to you to determine who’s right and who’s nuts.

Today’s Question: Which Super Bowl halftime performer are you most excited for??

Context:

Jami’s Take: Snoop Dogg

I am ordinarily the person at the Super Bowl party who is there for the football. But this year, despite being the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of Land-Grand Holy Land, let the record reflect that I am there for the food and the halftime show.

With all disrespect to both the Bengals and the Rams — your fan bases are terrible* and I bid you good day.

J.Lo and Mariah Carey’s halftime performance is going to be hard to top for me, but I’m ecstatic about the lineup for this year — Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, and Dr. Dre.

But most exciting to me is Snoop Dogg.

Speaking from firsthand experience, Snoop has the exact energy onstage that’s needed for a halftime performance. He brings a little bit of chaos, he brings a LOT of fun, and the music has a certain nostalgia for many of us (even more for me — if you missed my conversation with Meredith last week on Play Like A Girl, check it out to hear the story of the time I had dinner with Snoop Dogg in Kosovo).

The best halftime performances are a combination of song, dance, lights — it needs to be all-around entertainment. This is precisely why Snoop is a flawless choice for the halftime show. I once saw Snoop land a helicopter in the middle of a Kosovan soccer pitch and emerge toward the stage like royalty. Imagine if he pulled a stunt like that tomorrow.

I also feel that with the Super Bowl being in Los Angeles this year, Snoop Dogg feels like a delightful hometown choice. Having grown up in Long Beach, Snoop’s L.A. ties run deep, and there’s something distinctly L.A. about his sound.

Come halftime tomorrow, I will be sippin’ on gin and juice and soaking in every moment of whatever nonsense Snoop is about to bring. In a perfect world, he’ll perform a mix of his most popular raps, sprinkle in a little chaos, and toss in a few big surprises.

No matter what happens, it won’t be boring.

*There are approx. four Bengals fans and two Rams fans that I adore and tolerate despite their ill-chosen loyalties. You know who you are. Everyone else, ALL DISRESPECT.

Matt’s Take: Dr. Dre

Clearly Jami forgot about Dre, and as we know, that is never a good position to be in. I am not what I would describe as a hip-hop aficionado, but I did grow up listening to my parents’ records (literal vinyl records) of The Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow, and there was the pop-rap artists of my childhood like M.C. Hammer, Vanilla Ice, L.L. Cool J, and others. As I came into my formative high school and college years, Snoop D-O-Double G and Dr. Dre were having more and more crossover success. That, of course, ushered in the era of Eminem.

However, for my white bread, suburban Ohio palate, the rap album that still stands out to me as being revolutionary and revelatory is Dr. Dre’s “(The Chronic) 2001.” I remember being a freshman at Ohio State when that came out in 1999 and feeling like my mind was being opened to an entirely new art form. Of course that art form had long existed, and it was just my theretofore myopic musical worldview hadn’t yet allowed me to truly appreciate it yet. The album has everything someone with a limited rap knowledge could want: Banger after banger (we definitely didn’t use that term in 1999) like ”Still D.R.E.,” “Forgot About Dre,” and “The Next Episode” to appearances by Xzibit, Snoop, Nate Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and my first exposure to Marshall Mathers, and a lead songwriting credit for Jay-Z on “Still D.R.E.”

While most of my listening time is taken up by podcasts and showtunes these days, “2001” is still an album that features heavily in my musical rotation, and while I know that Dre has decades and decades of other iconic tracks, if in complete darkness we see a bright backlight casting an imposing figure strutting onto the Super Bowl stage and we hear, “Dun. Dun, dun. Dun, dun... Dah da-da-da-dah,” I will absolutely lose my shit.