Los Angeles rapper Kendrick Lamar headlined the coveted halftime show at the Super Bowl LIX on Sunday in front of more than 120 million viewers.
The 13-minute set - which divided fans - included his hugely popular Drake diss track Not Like Us, which swept all five Grammy categories he was nominated in last week.
While the show will easily be his biggest of the year, it may surprise fans that Lamar, 37, won't be paid a dime for his work.
The National Football League has never paid artists for performing at the halftime show, though the NFL does shell out cash for production costs.
A Reuters report from 2020 revealed that the PepsiCo-sponsored halftime show featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira costs a whopping $13 million to produce.
An NFL rep named Joanna Hunter told Forbes in 2016, 'We do not pay the artists. We cover expenses and production costs.'
There is no indication yet how much Lamar's halftime production will cost at this time.
The performance is expected to last about 15 minutes between the first and second half of the Big Game between the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Lamar was previously featured during the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in 2021 alongside Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary J. Blige in Lamar's hometown of Los Angeles.
This time he served as the headliner, as he was joined by SZA to perform the song Luther from his new album GNX.
The Super Bowl halftime show opened with none other than actor Samuel L. Jackson, who was playing 'Uncle Sam,' dressed in a red white and blue tuxedo.
Lamar first performed a snippet of an unreleased song before diving into his song Squabble Up from GNX.
He also had a Buick Grand National Experimental on the stage - the car his GNX album was named after, and the same car his father took him home from the hospital in after he was born.
The rapper then performed two songs from his 2017 album Damn. - Humble. and DNA before hinting at playing his epic Drake diss track Not Like Us, with a surprise cameo from Serena Williams.
He played a brief snippet from Not Like Us before moving on to sing Luther with SZA, a song from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack.
He ultimately performed an abridged and censored version of Not Like Us, though he did still call out Drake by name and use his controversial 'A minor' line... which the packed crowd at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans was heard singing along with.
It comes after Lamar said he was aiming to infuse his Los Angeles hip-hop flavor into New Orleans while staying true to his storytelling roots during his halftime performance.
'Being in the now and being just locked-in to how I feel and the energy I have now, that's the L.A. energy for me,' he said Thursday at a press conference hosted by Apple Music.
'That's something I wanted to carry over to New Orleans and for the world to see. This is me. This is Kendrick Lamar, 37 years old, and I still feel like I'm elevating, I'm still on a journey.'
When asked what viewers can expect, Lamar answered: 'Storytelling. I think I´ve always been very open about storytelling through all my catalog and my history of music. And I´ve always had a passion about bringing that on whatever stage I´m on.'
