Serena Williams sizzles with surprise dance performance during NFL Super Bowl halftime show with Kendrick Lamar

New Orleans: The Super Bowl showdown was also host to plenty of celebrities and the spotlight fell on tennis legend Serena Williams, who surprised fans with an appearance during Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl 59 halftime show.

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.

Lamar sang his hit-track ‘Not Like Us’, while Serena danced to it on stage, showing her cool moves. The rapper even mentioned her in his song, saying, “From Alondra down to Central, better not speak on Serena.”

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.”

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.