arneezy.

The NFL asked Jay-Z to headline the Super Bowl seven years ago, and he told them to forget it. Back in 2019, Roger Goodell signed Jay-Z's company to run the halftime show, and he had exactly one request. He wanted Jay-Z up on that stage himself someday. Jay-Z told him that if the deal was about him performing, they could end the conversation right there. And he wasn't bluffing. A year before that he'd rapped about turning down the Super Bowl during the whole Kaepernick fight. So instead of performing, Roc Nation took a reported $5 million a year to go pick everybody else. Here's who he picked. Shakira and J.Lo, the Weeknd, Dre and Snoop and Eminem at SoFi in 2022 (that one won an Emmy), Rihanna, Usher, Kendrick, Bad Bunny. Kendrick's show in 2025 pulled 133.5 million viewers and knocked off Michael Jackson's record from 1993. Usher and Bad Bunny come in right behind them. So three of the four most-watched halftime shows ever were Jay-Z's calls, and he never once put his own name in. Then this year he went back on tour for the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt. Three nights at Yankee Stadium did over $42 million. The last two shows were this past Friday and Saturday at SoFi in Inglewood, which happens to be where Super Bowl LXI is on February 14. Two days after that, the NFL dropped the announcement. It's Jay-Z in black and white, sitting by himself in an empty stadium with goats walking around the seats and one lying across his lap. Goodell's getting his one request after all. It took seven years, and it lands on Valentine's Day in front of a wife who's already done the halftime show twice.

Activision paid $99.9 million for Guitar Hero's publisher in 2006, made over $2 billion off the franchise, then killed the entire genre in four years. Today that publisher's name came back from the dead to sell plastic guitars again. RedOctane was two brothers, Kai and Charles Huang, who started out selling dance pads. They published the first Guitar Hero in 2005 and it hit $1 billion in North American sales in 26 months, faster than any franchise before it. So Activision did what Activision does. Annualize. In 2009 alone they shipped Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, DJ Hero, and Guitar Hero editions for Metallica, Van Halen, and Smash Hits. Six music games in twelve months. That playbook works for Call of Duty because a sequel only asks for $60. A Guitar Hero sequel asked you to justify the $100 plastic guitar already in your closet, and every new SKU competed with the last one on the same shelf. Genre revenue went from $1.7 billion in 2008 to about $300 million in 2010. Activision shut down RedOctane, then the whole Guitar Hero business unit. They strip-mined ten years of demand into three. Now the Huang brothers are back as advisors at a revived RedOctane, the studio head is a Guitar Hero veteran, and Stage Tour launches December 10 with 90 licensed songs and 180 real Gibson guitars. Fifteen years of untouched demand, and the people who invented the genre finally get a second run at it.