One of the biggest moments of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime performance on Sunday night (Feb. 9) was when he called on his fellow Compton, Calif., native Serena Williams to crip walk onstage during “Not Like Us.”
While many fans online loved the surprise cameo, Stephen A. Smith weighed in with his own take, taking aim at Williams’ husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. “If I’m your husband, I’m thinking, ‘Why are you up there trolling him, trolling your ex?’” the sports analyst began during his First Take podcast on Feb. 10. “If I’m married, and my wife is going to troll her ex, go back to his a–. Because clearly you don’t belong with me. What you worried about him for, and you with me? Bye!”
For context, Drake and Williams reportedly dated in 2015, and the rapper revealed that he wrote his 2016 hit “Too Good” about the athlete. The tennis champion’s appearance during the performance was widely speculated to be a dig at Drake — the famous subject of Lamar’s “Not Like Us” diss track. In 2022, Drake fired shots at Ohanian, rapping on “Middle of the Ocean”: “Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie/ He claim we don’t got a problem but no, boo, it’s like you comin’ for sushi/ We might pop up on ’em at will like Suzuki.”
Co-host Ryan Clark then chimed in, adding, “If you with Serena Williams, you’re going to be a kept man anyway — don’t start that, you ain’t gonna run the house.”
Shannon Sharpe also added in defense of Ohanian, “I think he is doing pretty well. He founded Reddit and then he sold Reddit for a big chunk of change. I think he OK.”
Ohanian ended up responding to Smith’s thoughts on X. The entrepreneur, who was in attendance at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, replied to a tweet from the New York Post about Smith’s comments. “I got you @stephenasmith,” he wrote, linking to the inspiration behind Williams’ crip walk, which was the backlash she received for the dance at Wimbleton more than a decade ago and how the decision is “bigger than the music.”
“I know I should know better, but I continue to be surprised by full the spectrum of genius and stupidity in humanity,” Ohanian concluded.
See his responses below.