Stop worrying about whether Maroon 5 will perform at the Super Bowl next year (you only watch the commercials anyway, right?) and take a trip down memory lane with previous halftime-invitee Big Boi of Outkast. On Thursday, the Atlanta rapper was a guest on ESPN’s The Dan LeBatard show, which meant he soon found himself talking about the most memorable sporting event he ever played (including the ones he wouldn’t remember because he hadn’t actually attended them).
Big Boi casually mentioned to the radio host that Outkast had been invited to perform at the halftime show some years back. The duo ultimately turned down the offer, though, in part because André 3000 refused to remove any of the Polaroid-shaking references in “Hey Ya!” Apparently, the Super Bowl organizers weren’t offering the group enough time to perform that song and “I Like The Way You Move” in their entirety. The two songs, off 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, each run about five minutes.
When asked if he’d tried to convince the other half of Outkast to change his mind, Big Boi says he did, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. André 3000 would not be swayed, saying “Nah, can’t do it,” when presumably asked to make some kind of medley of the two songs. Assuming that Super Bowl organizers keep up with the Billboard 100, it seems likely that Outkast was asked to perform in the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, in 2004, the year of the infamous nipple slip. Now we’ll never know what would have malfunctioned on Big Boi or André 3000.
[h/t Pitchfork]