New Super Bowl Halftime Trailer Has Dr. Dre Traversing Beach That Can't Possibly Exist And We've Got Questions

Listen, we all love Dr. Dre. And Snoop, and Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick (jury is still out on Eminem). So we’re as pumped as the next local news outlet™ about the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show™ — actually trademarked — featuring all of them in what promises to be an epic, SoCal-centric performance.

But the trailer was released today, and folks, we’ve got some questions. Who made it, and how do they experience topography? What about geography? Climatology? We are speaking specifically of this image, in which Dr. Dre appears to be meandering down a chilly New England coastline with downtown L.A. in the background, and nary a city street in between. You probably already took a good look at it at the top of this story. Feel free to scroll back up.

Let’s review.

Jessica: I want to begin by asking if anyone else is reminded of Sharknado by these strangely smooth beach graphics? Who else can’t help but anticipate the descent of an airborne great white onto the unsuspecting head of one of the greatest rap producers of all time? What a way to go.

Moving on.

Where In The World Is Dr. Dre?

Sam: If someone from out of town were to put it down [on a map] for the father of rap, it might be difficult. Nay, impossible. They would move their lips and it would be a bunch of gibberish and by the end of the directions, we would have completely forgot about Dre.

But for Angelenos, everybody knows it's obvious.

Now, let’s toss our basic logic hats on here. Using the latest advancements in forensic cinematography, we were able to pinpoint a rough location of where Dr. Dre would have to be, ignoring any sightline impediments, in the high-resolution computer rendering below.

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Google Maps, photo by Justin Davis via Wikimedia Creative Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dr._Dre_2013.jpg

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The rough dunes, which seem to have wiped out the entirety of the Westside north of the 90 (take that, gentrification), are reminiscent more of the marshes of Boston than, say, the Ballona Wetlands, but I like alliteration and let’s stick with B. Dr. Dre is somewhere in the area between South Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey, not far from the Ballona Ecological Preserve.

Jessica: He does appear to be. And I appreciate your tireless work here, Sam, but I’m stuck on the fact that all of L.A. between that coastal hotspot and the 110 is simply gone. And as you can see from this image taken from the nearby mountains, there’s a whole lot happening between the DTLA skyline and the ocean.

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Risk Esparza

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LAist

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Why? What does obliterating the city have to do with football, or even with some of West Coast rap’s greatest artists (as an aside, I’ll feel quite robbed if there’s no Tupac hologram)? I’m sorry to say that I have only questions, and no answers.

How Long Is It Going To Take Dr. Dre To Get To The Stadium In Time For The Show?

Sam: Two and a half hours.

We’re going to assume that Dr. Dre made considerable progress on foot by the time you finished reading the above paragraphs and is now standing in Playa Del Rey. He still has seven and a half miles to go to get to SoFi Stadium in time for his performance, and if he plans on still hoofing it on his own two feet, he’ll be there in two and a half hours. He’s no spring chicken, but he’s still Dre, he’ll make it.

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Google Maps, Justin Davis via Wikimedia Creative Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dr._Dre_2013.jpg

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Jessica: I have to disagree Sam, because fortunately for Dre, the entire area between Dre and SoFi Stadium no longer exists — including SoFi Stadium itself, which is a tricky bit of business — so if we’re truly suspending all disbelief, and we are, Dre is basically there already.

A Final Note About That Keyboard

Screenshot from the Super Bowl Halftime show trailer that includes the biggest keyboard we've ever seen.

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YouTube

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Nameless editor: A standard piano keyboard has 88 keys (we looked it up). This one has approximately 218. Actually, the mist made it hard to count so we can’t be sure. In general, the advice is not to submerge pianos in water (we looked it up, and it said don't even put a glass of water on a piano. Really.)

Jessica: I don’t know, I kind of like this graphic? I also want to give a nod to Dre’s footprints, which are giving me Hallmark Mother’s Day sentimentality. Who will follow? 

If You Missed It, Here's The Full Trailer

And you can read more about what's in the trailer, beyond fantastical geography, from our colleague Mike Roe.