Seeing Serena Williams pop up as a special guest during Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show performance may have caught a lot of people by surprise. But, if you’re tapped in with the culture and the history—then it really shouldn’t have.
While Williams and Lamar don’t have a personal history, they share a common enemy (or hater): Drake. In fact, the tie between the three of them goes back more than a decade and features some major milestones—all of which led up to Sunday’s fire performance which ultimately served as a “get back” for both the Compton natives. Don’t worry, we’ll explain.
2011-2015: Drake and Serena are Romantically Involved
Things all started back in 2011 when initial reports were coming out that Williams and Drake were dating. While the two never came out to publicly address, confirm nor deny it, multiple lyrics from several Drake songs that were dropped were directly aimed at her. Some of those songs include “Worst Behavior” off the “Nothing Was the Same” album in 2013 and “Too Good” off the “Views” album in 2016. (More on this later.)
2012: London Olympics
Meanwhile, back in 2012, after winning the gold at the London Olympics, Williams celebrated by doing the “crip walk” or the c-walk. That move turned what should have been a controversy-free occasion into one filled with backlash as the tennis champ got subsequently raked over the coals for doing a dance that “glorified gang culture.” Realistically speaking, however, though the dance may have roots in the notorious LA-based Crips gang, it’s come to be adopted and revered by Black culture at-large and viewed as a specific nod to Black LA.
2016-2017: “Views” and a Wedding
Fast forward to 2016, Drake dropped his fourth studio album “Views” which featured a track called “Too Good.” While many didn’t know it at the time, Drake would later come out to confirm that the song was in fact about Williams some eight years later.
Meanwhile, after finally calling it quits with the Canadian rapper in 2015, Williams would go on to marry Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in 2017. They’d later welcome their first child, daughter Alexis Olympia two years later.
2022: Shots Fired Once Again
Jump to 2022 and Williams couldn’t enjoy her newfound marriage and child without her messy ex creeping back up. And that’s exactly what Drake did when he dropped his song “Middle of the Ocean” from his 2022 collab album with fellow rapper 21 Savage. In it, he called out Williams and her husband by name and called the latter a “groupie.”
The lyrics in its entirety: “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie, he claim we don’t got a problem but no, boo, it’s like you comin’ for sushi. We might pop up on’em at will like Suzuki.”
2024, 2025: “Not Like Us” Cosign and Subsequent Super Bowl Performance
Enter 2024, when Lamar and Drake began their beef (technically it goes back to 2013, but I digress). While things mostly stayed between the two rappers, Lamar took a moment to shoutout Williams when he dropped his cultural juggernaut diss track “Not Like Us” back in May 2024: “From Alondra down to Central, n*gga better not speak on Serena.” This alone served as a get back and a warning against Drake to keep Williams’ name out his mouth moving forward.
So, by the time it was time for Lamar to take the 2025 Super Bowl stage, what better way to give Williams her ultimate redemption arc on two fronts: saying “eff you” to those criticizing her at the 2012 Olympics and her ex who still seems to be pressed about losing her all these years later.
In the immediate aftermath, Williams expressed her excitement over the moment (and took a slight jab at the 2012 incident), saying on X/Twitter: “Man, I did not crip walk like that at Wimbledon, I would’ve been FINED. It was all love.”
And that’s exactly what this moment was about. Love for Black culture, love for being petty, and the love of silencing your haters one step, one moment at a time.