Serena Williams is setting the record straight about her appearance during Kendrick Lamar‘s Super Bowl halftime show.
Alongside a video capturing behind-the-scenes moments ahead of the show, she explained she was called to join K.Dot because of her victory dance at the 2012 Olympics.
“When @kendricklamar and team called and was like ‘we’ve been trying to do something forever, what about this? We loved your crip walk at the Olympics after you won the gold medal,'” she wrote. “I’m like Super Bowl? Are you serious? When in the world would I ever be able to dance at a superbowl? (Never) let’s do it!”
Serena added, “I knew my winning dance after the @olympics would pay off one day. End of story.”
During Sunday’s halftime show, Serena came out crip-walking to the Drake diss “Not Like Us,” which some interpreted as a diss of her own. The two were said to have dated in the past, and she was mentioned in songs like “Worst Behavior.”
In 2017 Serena married Alexis Ohanian, who Drake called a groupie in his 2022 song “Middle of the Ocean.” Alexis responded, “The reason I stay winning is because I’m relentless about being the absolute best at whatever I do — including being the best groupie for my wife & daughter.”
In response to a comment suggesting Serena should apologize for her Super Bowl performance, Alexis said, “Some of y’all have no idea how criticized Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago and it shows.”
As of Monday, per Variety, Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” has seen a 430% increase in streams on Spotify. Nine other songs also saw a streaming increase, with “Humble” soaring over 300% and “All The Stars” with SZA going up 290%.
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