You can add Stephen A. Smith to the growing list of critics unhappy with Serena Williams’ cameo during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at Sunday night’s Super Bowl.
The ESPN commentator offered up a blunt assessment of the 23-time Grand Slam champion’s decision to perform her Crip Walk dance (which she infamously did after defeating Maria Sharapova at the London Olympics) as Lamar played Not Like Us, his insult-laden song aimed at Toronto rapper Drake — who Williams dated.
“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 during a segment of First Take. “What you worried about him for and you’re with me? Bye. Bye.”
When she performed the dance at the 2012 Olympics, it caused controversy because of its associations with gang culture in Los Angeles (her older half-sister Yetunde Price was killed by a member of the Crips in a drive-by shooting in 2003).
At the time, Williams dismissed the controversy saying it was “just a dance.”
“First of all. It was just a dance,” she replied when she was asked if she had any regrets after performing the Crip Walk (per The Guardian). “I didn’t know that’s what it was called. Second, why are you asking me that? If anything, you should be trying to ask me questions to lift me up … I’m done with that question.”
But in the hours after her surprise appearance during Lamar’s halftime show, critics on social media took aim at the former tennis star for resurrecting the controversial routine to make a dig at an old boyfriend.
One person outlined the entire leadup of events that led to Yetunde’s tragic murder in 2003 in a lengthy post shared to X.
“SERENA WILLIAMS might be the biggest moron I’ve seen so far in 2025,” another critic swiped. “Imagine being married with a kid but you’re CRIP-WALKING on the Super Bowl stage to diss your ex, while your sister lies dead in the grave because CRIP GANGS shot her to death. Make it make sense.”
“Serena Williams, you should be ashamed of (yourself) ‘crip walking’ after what happened to (your) oldest sister. A disgrace,” a third person added.
In a video shared to X after Lamar’s halftime show, Williams made a lighthearted quip about her moves during the song in which the rapper refers to Drake as a “certified pedophile.”
“Man, I did not crip walk like that at Wimbledon. I would be fined!” she joked.
Her husband, Alexis Ohanian, also co-signed his wife’s appearance, calling Lamar’s set a “Pretty fantastic halftime show.”
Although the two never publicly admitted they dated, Drake revealed his 2016 song Too Good was inspired by his relationship with Williams.
“It’s funny because when I make songs about women, I also make songs for them. So, I know what kind of song to make. If I’m gonna talk about them, I’ll at least do them the justice of making them a song that they’ll like,” Drake said in a video that resurfaced last year. “I know Serena very well, and I know that she’ll hear it loud and clear, but not hate me for it because it’s lighthearted.”
Drake also took a shot at Ohanian on his 2022 track Middle of the Ocean in which he called the Reddit co-founder a “groupie.”
Despite featuring the popular diss track aimed at Drizzy, Lamar’s halftime show was roundly dismissed as one of the worst-ever to feature at a Super Bowl, and Drake, who is on tour in Australia, was happy that the performance was panned on social media.
“He knows it resonated with Kendrick’s target audience who have basically exiled him. But he is happy that people weren’t impressed by Kendrick’s performance and is feeling better about his chances of a comeback — even if he does feel that he has lost some of his core fans,” an insider told the Daily Mail.
That Lamar played Not Like Us didn’t come as much of a surprise. The Sunday prior, the Compton emcee took home five Grammys for the single and had the entire crowd at the Crypto.com Arena, including Taylor Swift, dancing to the song and belting out some of its most offensive lyrics.
“I wanna play their favourite song but you know they love to sue,” Lamar teased early on in his 13-minute set, referencing Drake’s lawsuit against Universal Music Group, who he has accused of inflating the song’s popularity and fanning the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper’s unproven pedophilia accusations.
When Drake’s pal Kevin Durant was asked about Lamar’s segment by Dana Scott of The Arizona Republic on Monday he dismissed it, saying, “It meant nothing to me.”
“It was a pretty boring day,” Durant added. “The game was a little … the game got out of hand.”