Justin Timberlake paid tribute to Prince at the 52nd Super Bowl. Prince appeared on a large screen and the outside of the stadium was lit up in purple. Timberlake had some worried about doing a performance alongside a Prince hologram. Not everyone was impressed on social media with the tribute.

Nonetheless, he still included the legendary artist in his halftime show. The Midwest, after all, is Prince’s territory, and the flamboyant superstar might have been a lock for this year’s halftime spectacle after his Super Bowl XLI performance had he not passed away in 2016.

An honor fit for a Prince. pic.twitter.com/EjsGPhOYiG — Super Bowl on NBC (@SNFonNBC) February 5, 2018

Timberlake is no stranger to the halftime show with this year marking his third appearance, which is a Super Bowl record. Timberlake is known for the infamous incident with Janet Jackson when the duo performed rendition of his hit “Rock Your Body.” Timberlake went to remove Jackson’s corset and accidentally tore off her bra, exposing her breast to a national audience.

There were also rumors going around that Timberlake might take this opportunity to reunite with N’Sync or Jackson but that was denied by the self-styled Man Of The Woods. The goal of the hologram was to try and honor Prince. But Prince, in an old 1998 interview with Guitar World, said playing with a hologram of a deceased musician would be “the most demonic imaginable.”

“That’s the most demonic thing imaginable. Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing … it really is demonic. And I am not a demon. Also, what they did with that Beatles song [‘Free As a Bird’], manipulating John Lennon’s voice to have him singing from across the grave … that’ll never happen to me. To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.”

What did you think of the Super Bowl halftime performance? Let us know in the comments section.

Super Bowl Halftime Social Media Reactions

Justin Timberlake honoring Prince by reminding the world just how much better the Purple One’s halftime show was than anyone else. — Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) February 5, 2018

Prince in heaven, watching this Justin Timberlake performance like. #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/bNCytPncd0 — Denizcan James (@MrFilmkritik) February 5, 2018

WOW JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE TRYING TO RUIN PRINCE AND JORDAN 3s IN THE SAME DAMN PERFORMANCE 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 — Eddie Huang (@MrEddieHuang) February 5, 2018

Justin Timberlake won the black community when he whipped out Prince. He knew that was gone seal the deal lol — Spoken Reasons (@SpokenReasons) February 5, 2018

Oh my god… he included Prince, anyway? Oh no…#SuperBowl #Timberlake — Charlotte Clymer🏳️‍🌈 (@cmclymer) February 5, 2018

This Justin Timberlake show is so bad I wish they hadn’t deep-sixed the Prince hologram. — Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) February 5, 2018

It’s not quite a hologram. Part of Justin Timberlake’s Prince Tribute: pic.twitter.com/j4EZfpj7ae — Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) February 5, 2018

No offense to Justin Timberlake, but he’s no Prince when it comes to Super Bowl halftime shows. — John McClain (@McClain_on_NFL) February 5, 2018

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League. The game is the culmination to a regular season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. Normally, Roman numerals are used to identify each game, rather than the year in which it is held. For example, Super Bowl I was played on January 15, 1967, following the 1966 regular season.

The sole exception to this naming convention tradition occurred with Super Bowl 50, which was played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 regular season, and the following year, the nomenclature returned to Roman numerals for Super Bowl LI, following the 2016 regular season.

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