On February 9, Tennis legend Serena Williams made headlines with her unexpected cameo during Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. While on stage, she crip-walked during her performance, which didn’t go unnoticed. Social media users called her out for the infamous walk associated with the Crips gang. However, there’s a tragic connection between Williams and Crips, which makes her performance even more hard to digest.
For the unaware, the Crip Walk, also known as C-Walk, was created by ‘Robert Sugar Bear’ Jackson in the 1970s. Robert was a first-generation member of the Crips gang, known for its violent history involving murders, robberies, and supply of narcotics. They used the C-Walk as a symbol of their allegiance. It involves intricate foot movements where participants spell out C-R-I-P with their feet. It is reported that the gang members performed this dance after killing a target.
Over time, this dance move entered the rap culture, with several artists, such as Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, performing in several shows. The same walk was performed by Serena Williams in 2012 when she won gold at the London Olympics. She faced heavy criticism back then as people accused her of glorifying gang violence. And yet, Williams replicated the walk at the Super Bowl!
Williams has a heartbreaking connection with the Crip gang. In 2003, her half-sister Yetunde Price was killed by this violent gang. She and her boyfriend were in a parked SUV when she was shot to death. As per Sportbible, their vehicle was parked outside a crack house operated by the South Side Compton Crips. The gang open fired without confirming the target as they believed that they were under threat by a rival gang.
Prince was 31 when she lost her life for no reason. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. Meanwhile, Robert Maxfield, 25, was convicted of the homicide and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
So, when Williams performed the dance associated with the gang that killed her half-sibling, people were furious and questioned her move. Williams defended herself by saying, “Man, I did not Crip Walk like that at Wimbledon. Ooh, I would have been fined! It was all love.”
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Cut to 2025, Williams did the controversial dance again at Super Bowl 2025. She then went on to claim that Kendrick wanted her to perform the dance move. As her appearance went viral, she posted on Instagram, “When Kendrick Lamar and team called and was like, ‘We’ve been trying to do something forever, what about this? We loved your Crip Walk at the Olympics after you won the gold medal. I’m like, Super Bowl? Are you serious? When in the world would I ever be able to dance at a Super Bowl? Never. Let’s do it!”
“I knew my winning dance after the Olympics would pay off one day,” she concluded.
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However, people find it difficult to understand why she performs the gang’s dance move after having lost a sibling because of them. An X user wrote, “Serena Williams’ sister was killed by a Crip in a drive-by shooting and she had the audacity to Crip Walk during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show… indefensible.”
Another person wrote, “Imagine your sister was murdered by Crips and 20 years later you’re out here C-Walking in blue. SMH.”
Meanwhile her husband, Alexis Ohanian, defended her as he wrote on Instagram, “Some of y’all have no idea how criticised Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago, and it shows. This is bigger than the music.”
