Kid Rock is invoking the words of the late Kobe Bryant as he heads into Super Bowl Sunday, aka the day he’ll headline Turning Point USA’s polarizing “halftime show” offering in protest of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show.

In a Thursday (Feb. 5) post on X, Kid Rock shared a quote labeled “Mamba Mentality” and attributed to the basketball legend about taking criticism in stride. “Learn to love the hate,” it reads. Embrace it. Enjoy it. You earned it.”

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and everyone should have one about you,” it continues. “Haters are a good problem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.”

The hip-hop and country artist was announced as part of Turning Point’s “All-American Halftime Show” lineup on Feb. 2, along with Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert and Gabby Barrett. The ultra conservative organization previously shared plans in October to host the event at the same time as Bad Bunny’s actual Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday (Feb. 8) in protest of a Spanish-speaking artist headlining the coveted gig.

At the time, Turning Point promised that the alternative show would feature “anything in English” by way of musical acts and celebrate “faith, family and freedom.”

As evidenced by the Charlie Kirk-founded institution’s counter-programming, the September announcement that Benito would perform at the Super Bowl was controversial. At the time, many outraged conservatives labeled him as being “anti-ICE,” even though the Puerto Rican rapper hadn’t yet shared a stance on the immigration enforcement agency beyond saying he passed up U.S. tour dates out of concern that “ICE could be outside” his shows to target his Latino audience.

One week before the Super Bowl, however, Bad Bunny won best música urbana album at the 2026 Grammys for Debí Tirar Más Fotos — and while he was on stage making his acceptance speech, he made his feelings very clear.

“Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ICE out!” he said at the Feb. 1 award show. “We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we are not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans … The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.”

Kid Rock, however, is a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump and has advocated for ICE’s mission of mass deportations. In a response to reports in May 2025 that the musician’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse in Nashville had been targeted by ICE raids, Kid Rock wrote on X, “I 100% support getting illegal criminals out of our country no matter where they are.”

See Kid Rock’s post below.

Super Bowl LX will stream live on NBC, Telemundo and Peacock on Sunday (Feb. 8), and it’s shaping up to be one of the most-watched events of the year. While the main event is, of course, the football game itself, the Super Bowl halftime show has become a highlight of the night for many viewers.

This year’s performer, Bad Bunny, has been tapped by title sponsor Apple Music to take the stage, and it marks a historic moment for the halftime show. Bad Bunny is the first Latino artist to headline the Super Bowl, and he will perform the majority of the show in Spanish — something that’s become the subject of controversy among some conservative viewers.

Executive Bozoma Saint John knows what it’s like to be inside the process of halftime show planning and all the intricacies that go into the big performance. While she served as head of music and entertainment marketing at the then-halftime title sponsor Pepsi, she played a pivotal role in booking Beyoncé‘s landmark 2013 performance in New Orleans, where the star performed both the national anthem and the halftime show. “I think people take very much for granted that there hadn’t been a black woman performing on that stage since Janet Jackson, and that had been ten years,” she explains.

The halftime show has evolved a lot since then. When Beyoncé took the stage in 2013, the coveted slot was largely given to older superstars like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney and Madonna. However, the 2010s marked a time of change for the halftime show, making it a more pop-forward and current selection of acts. The following year, Saint John’s team picked Bruno Mars, which she counts as another highlight of her Pepsi tenure.

In the show’s current iteration, it has evolved once again, thanks to the involvement of Roc Nation, starting in 2019, and Apple Music as the title sponsor. Now, it’s much more common to see acts from hip-hop, R&B and Latin on the big stage. With Usher, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny selected in recent years, the halftime show now serves as a way to reach out to new, global audiences, helping expand the game’s reach beyond traditional football fans.

On the latest episode of Billboard’s On the Record podcast, Saint John explains what it means to be a title sponsor for the halftime show, how music plays a role as “cultural ambassador” at the big game and why Beyoncé’s turn on the stage will go down in Super Bowl history.

Watch the full episode below, or find it on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

Let’s talk about how you booked Beyoncé back in 2013 while you were at Pepsi. How does one book a star of that caliber?

When [Pepsi] was doing the deal with the NFL, one of the things that impressed me was that the NFL was open to our suggestion on who the halftime performer should be. I think what people don’t realize is that this is a 360 deal. It’s not just that they are the artist who is performing on the Super Bowl halftime show, they’re also in your commercials. They’re promoting whatever product it is you have. They’re doing the off-the-field entertainment. They’re doing meet-and-greets. It’s a huge, huge commitment…on top of the fact that [Pepsi was] also going to put the artist’s face on a billion cans that year.

There’s a lot to coordinate there. Obviously, I can’t take all the credit because there were hundreds of people working on this campaign, but I think my understanding of pop culture and the relationship I already built with Beyoncé and her mom and her team [from years ago when she booked Beyoncé for a commercial] was helpful.

You mentioned the laundry list of things that a halftime performer has to do as part of the contract. I want to know more about that. What are some of the negotiations the performer goes through that viewers might not expect?

I think every negotiation is a little bit of a push and pull, right? It’s like, what do you want? What do I want? So, a lot of times, what artists will also do is make sure that a project they are trying to push is coming out around the same time, because this is such a [marketing] engine.

The thing is, the halftime show performance is about 13 minutes long. And while you’re on stage, yes, of course, people are watching, etc., but you gotta depend on that marketing engine of the brand to push whatever else it is that you want. And so the negotiation ahead of time is both about what the brand is looking for, because they gotta get their money’s worth out of, you know, having you as a spokesperson. And then on top of it, the artist needs to also have what they need coming out of the event.

Something that a lot of viewers also don’t know is that you don’t get a typical payment to perform at the Super Bowl. Usually, the pay is just minimum union scale. What they do pay for, though, is a lot of the production costs, somewhere between 10 and 20 million. In recent years, acts like The Weeknd have reportedly pitched in money from their own pocket on top of that. Why do you think that is? Have production costs gone up, or are artists just trying to one-up each other?

You have to consider that this is probably one of the largest broadcast stages that exists, even globally, because now we also have the opportunity of social media, so the performance is going to be cut and shared everywhere. And so what you’re thinking is that you have the largest broadcast stage, the opportunity to reach millions and millions and millions of people around the world. You want it to be your best effort. So this is really, like, it’s a Super Bowl for the teams, but it is the Super Bowl for you, too.

Do you feel that the bump in sales and streams that an artist receives after the game makes up for the lack of monetary compensation?

From a marketing standpoint, what you think about this is a long tail. So, yes, you are going to have the immediate boost of record streaming, or somebody purchases a thing that you’re trying to sell, but it is the long tail influence of your performance and your presence on that stage that actually pays out the dividends. Think about all of the deals you can do afterwards, and the way that people will think of you will increase your prominence. That’s really what the benefit is of doing the performance and making sure it is literally the best performance of your life.

What does it take to become the halftime show title sponsor, like Apple Music or Pepsi?

First of all, these are long-term deals. It’s not like you get the sponsorship and you’re in it for one year. When we did it at Pepsi, it was a 10-year deal with options to renew. And, you know, sometimes after 10 years, a lot of leadership has changed, maybe the product has changed, and therefore people don’t see the value in continuing the relationship, which is what happened in the case of Pepsi. I was no longer there. I would have fought like hell to keep it! But, you know, people make different decisions.

I was ecstatic when Apple Music became the halftime show sponsor. It feels like a great fit. You couldn’t ask for a better fit for a music streaming service. The funny thing is, though I wasn’t at Apple Music when they won the bid, I was the global head of marketing at Netflix, and it is little known, but I wanted it when I was at Netflix. That didn’t happen. I mean, it really just made better sense for Apple Music. They are a music streaming service that can promote the music in the way it needs to be promoted!

50 Cent never lets a feud die, and he etched another chapter in his beef with Floyd Mayweather while trolling the boxing legend with a haymaker over his $340 million lawsuit against Showtime.

50 mocked Floyd Wednesday (Feb. 4) about his reading comprehension when it comes to contracts, and joked how the athlete need to get back in the ring with Mike Tyson or Bud Crawford to make up for allegedly losing out on a major payday.

“Oh no don’t cry now champ they beat you out of $320 million, you dumb ass. I told you let me read the contracts now lace up, You gotta look good fighting Mike,” he quipped in his Instagram post. “then maybe we can get Bud to beat your ass for some big money.”

The reading jab ties back to 50 in 2014, when the G-Unit mogul issued a public ASL/ESL reading challenge to Money Mayweather, daring him to read a full page of The Cat in the Hat or Harry Potter for 50 to donate $750,000 to one of the boxer’s charities.

Bow Wow had a laugh at 50’s latest pettiness, and left a skull emoji in the comment section, while another fan respected 50’s relentlessness when it comes to making his enemies miserable. “50 will never let his opps get a pass,” they wrote.

According to The Athletic, Mayweather filed a lawsuit with California state court on Tuesday (Feb. 3) against Showtime Networks and the ex-president of Showtime Sports. Floyd claimed the company siphoned millions away from him and played a role in executing a fraud scheme that cost him about $340 million in total.

“Floyd is one of boxing’s biggest pay-per-view draws. He generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Showtime,” Mayweather’s attorney Bobby Samini relayed to TMZ. “Mr. Mayweather now takes this fight to the courtroom to recover what he rightfully earned. Retiring undefeated at 50-0, Mr. Mayweather will go the distance in the courtroom just as he has in the ring.”

In a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, a spokesperson for Paramount — who owns Showtime — said of the lawsuit, “These baseless claims lack legal or factual meri. We strongly reject them and will respond accordingly through the court process.”

Once upon a time, 50 and Floyd were close friends in the 2000s, until a 2012 financial dispute caused a rift in their relationship. Their feud has continued more than a decade later.

On the heels of announcing his upcoming fifth solo album, Konnakol, Zayn revealed the dates for his biggest tour yet on Thursday (Feb. 5)O. The former One Direction member and solo star will kick off the Konnakol Tour on May 12 in Manchester, England, at the AO Arena on an outing that will have him headlining arenas and stadiums across North America, South America, Mexico and his native U.K. for the first time since leaving One Direction in 2015.

The 31-date Live Nation-produced tour will hit a series of arenas in the U.K. in May before moving on to a run of shows in Mexico in June and arenas in the U.S. in July and August. The American portion of the tour is slated to kick off on July 19 in Philadelphia at Xfinity Mobile Arena, before moving on to Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Nashville, Phoenix, Los Angeles and more before winding down on Sept. 5 at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.

A run of South American shows in October will precede the final run of U.S. gigs in November, with the tour scheduled to end on Nov. 20 at the Kaseya Center in Miami.

Zayn, who debuted and previewed some of the songs from Konnakol at his recently wrapped debut Las Vegas residency at the Park MGM, is gearing up to drop the LP on April 17, with the lead single, “Die for Me,” due out on Friday (Feb. 6).

Tickets for the tour will go on sale first through the Zayn VIP KEY pre-sale on Tuesday (Feb. 10) at 12 p.m. local time in all markets; all existing VIP KEY holders will be notified and automatically receive a unique passcode unlocked in the VIP KEY app. Fans who have not yet signed up for VIP KEY can join now through Sunday (Feb. 8) at 11:59 p.m. ET via his website. Additional pre-sales will run throughout the week ahead of a general on-sale starting Feb. 13.

Konnakol is Zayn’s follow-up to 2024’s Room Under the Stairs, which hit No. 15 on the Billboard 200. “It’s that time again, I have been lucky enough to make a fifth studio album,” the singer said in a press statement about the LP. “Konnakol in its definition is the act of creating percussive sounds with one’s voice, but what it means to me lies somewhere much deeper. It is a sound that holds the reverberation of a time before words existed.”

Check out the dates for Zayn’s 2026 KONNAKOL tour below.