Serena Williams’ cameo during Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl 2025 halftime show turned heads and raised eyebrows for a number of reasons.
The tennis superstar appeared during Lamar’s performance of “Not Like Us,” displaying her dance moves while Lamar rapped the hit Drake diss track.
Williams’ appearance during this particular song is no coincidence as she dated Drake in 2011, which wound up with the Canadian rapper releasing the song “Too Good” about Williams five years later in which he repeats the lyric, “I’m too good to you.”
Serena Williams performs during the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime ShowKevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation
This raised questions about Williams’ rationale for partaking in the diss track performance and its petty jabs toward her romantic fling from nearly 15 years ago, when she now has a family of her own.
Enter, Stephen A. Smith.
“If I’m married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his ass, ’cause clearly you don’t belong with me,” Smith said Monday on ESPN’s “First Take.”
“What you worried about him for and you’re with me? Bye. Bye.”
“If you were with Serena Williams, you’re going to be a kept man anyways,” co-host Ryan Clark responded. “Don’t start that.”
Shannon Sharpe also came to Ohanian’s defense, noting that he did well enough for himself financially.
Joining Lamar and Williams in the onslaught of trolling was yet another partner from his past: SZA.
Drake raps, “I used to date SZA back in ‘08,” in his feature on, “Mr. Right Now,” by 21 Savage and Metro Boomin. SZA later confirmed this, though added that it was actually 2009.
Stephen A. Smith was no fan of Serena Williams getting in on Kendrick Lamar’s Drake trolling.
While SZA featured mainly in other portions of the performance and did not add any particular trolling, it may have been a tough watch for Drake as Lamar performed the Song of the Year Grammy-winning diss track with two of Drake’s exes at an event he would naturally like to headline himself.
There’s been no public reaction from Drake, though, while onlookers continue to either applaud Williams’ trolling or, like Stephen A. Smith, question if the rapper is staying rent-free in her mind 14 years later.
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