Rihanna was serious about not supporting the Super Bowl this year. In October 2018, it was reported that the “Work” singer turned down an offer to perform at the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show. Rihanna made her decision in support of former NFL player Colin Kaepernick. In 2016, Kaepernick made headlines for kneeling during NFL games to raise awareness of racial injustice and inequality in America.
The self-proclaimed “bad gal” was on a flight on Sunday (Feb. 3) while the Super Bowl aired and documented her true feelings about the big game on her Instagram. In one post, she captioned a video of herself visibly annoyed with someone who asked, “How can we watch the Super Bowl on the flight?” In another video, Rihanna tagged an anonymous man as a “weirdo,” presumably because he was watching the game on their flight.
In a final post, the 30-year-old pop diva, who’s expected to drop her ninth studio album anytime now, made it very clear she was “beefin” with anyone “who thought I was watching super bowl” alongside a drawing of Kaepernick.
After Rihanna turned down the offer, Maroon 5 was booked to perform the halftime show instead. The pop-group was joined by Travis Scott and Big Boi at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Sunday, but their Super Bowl production was met with plenty of criticism, specifically for failing to boldly address the Colin Kaepernick situation.
“It’s a cop-out when you start talking about, ‘I’m not a politician, I’m just doing the music.’ Most of the musicians who have any kind of consciousness whatsoever understand what’s going on here,” Kaepernick’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, told Good Morning America ahead of the band’s performance.
Frontman Adam Levine responded to the critics in an Instagram post and noted that one of the lanterns included in their set included the word “kneel.” No word yet on if that will be enough to make Rihanna give it her stamp of approval.
Check out Rihanna’s Instagram posts about the Super Bowl ahead.