This month’s Super Bowl Halftime Show turned out to be very beneficial for the artists that took the stage. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige, all saw an increase in their streams after their performance. On Spotify, Dre’s numbers went up 185 percent, Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama” saw an increase of 520 percent, and Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” went up 250 percent. Additionally, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” saw its streams go up 245 percent. But that wasn’t all.
“Still D.R.E.” also became Dre and Snoop’s first video to reach a billion views on YouTube. While the video for the song, which appears on Dre’s second album, 1999’s 2001, was released on the week ending October 3, 1999, the video was uploaded to YouTube on October 2011. In addition to Dre and Snoop themselves, the video, which was directed by Hype Williams, also features cameos from Eminem, Xzibit, Funkmaster Flex, and Warren G. As for the song itself, Dre and Snoop have been very open over the years about the fact that it was completely written by Jay-Z.
The new milestone comes after Dre revealed what words the NFL made him remove from the entire Super Bowl performance. The opening lines for Kendrick Lamar’s “M.A.A.D. City” (“If Pirus and Crips could all get along / They’d probably gun me down by the end of this song”) did not fly with the NFL, according to Dre. “They had a problem with that, so we had to take that out,” he said. “No big deal, we get it. But, all in all, everybody came in, we were professional, everybody was on time.”