It was a brief but blockbuster cameo. For less than five seconds in the closing moments of the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, as headliner Kendrick Lamar performed his Grammy-award winning Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” the camera flipped to the corner of the stage to show 43-year-old tennis all-time-great Serena Williams crip walking.
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Williams’ appearance was notable for several reasons: Like Lamar, she grew up in Compton, the California city known for its significance to the history of hip-hop. Also like Lamar, Williams is not the biggest fan of Drake, to put it mildly. The two were rumored to have dated years ago, with Drake referencing Williams in his 2013 song “Worst Behavior” and again in his 2022 song “Middle of the Ocean,” in which he derided her now-husband Alexis Ohanian as a “groupie.”
Lamar even mentions Williams in the lyrics of “Not Like Us,” seemingly telling Drake he “better not speak on Serena.”
While hosting last year’s ESPY Awards, Williams teased, “If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that none of us, not a single one of us, not even me, should ever pick a fight with Kendrick Lamar,” before dancing to “Not Like Us.” “He will make your hometown not like you. The next time Drake sits courtside at a Raptors game, they’re going to Forrest Gump him. Seats taken.”
Williams also has a personal connection to the specific dance she performed on the Super Bowl stage. It recalled her celebration at the Wimbledon court in London after beating Maria Sharapova to secure the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics. At the time, she faced an onslaught of criticism for what commentators described as crass and inappropriate. “What Serena did was akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church,” Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock said. Others, like Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke, suggested the dance glamorized gang violence. “It was just a dance,” Williams, whose older sister Yetunde Price was killed by a member of the Southside Crips gang in 2003, responded when questioned in 2012.
More than 12 years later, however, she still remembers the backlash, which defenders long claimed was overblown and racist: “Man, I did not crip walk like that at Wimbledon. Ooh, I would’ve been fined,” Williams joked on social media on Sunday night.
Williams’ Super Bowl halftime-show cameo quickly took the internet by storm.
“serena ate that” 20-year-old tennis star Coco Gauff posted on X. “You did that!!!” Venus Williams said. The official accounts of the U.S. Olympic Team and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships also gave Williams plaudits.
“For those of y’all who weren’t outside, the media tore Serena to shreds for crip walking at Wimbledon,” one user wrote on X. “Her coming back to do a dance that references a culture she’s actually a part of, during a live performance criticizing someone for being a culture vulture is *chef’s kiss.*”
Lamar also earned praise for including Williams: “kendrick bringing out serena williams to crip walk after drake stalked that woman publicly for years and obsessively threw shots at her for turning him down is so wild, that man is the definition of chaotic good,” one X user commented.
While others seemed to almost feel sorry for Drake: “Serena Williams crip walking to a song about you being a pedophile has to hurt existentially,” wrote one X user. Said another: “If my ex girlfriend was on the tv crip walking to a song calling me a pedophile at the super bowl my feelings would be hurt to say the least.”
