Serena Williams is the single most famous person ever associated with the Crip Walk. Her two iconic public performances — at the 2012 London Olympics and the 2025 Super Bowl LIX halftime show — turned a regional Compton dance into a global cultural moment, twice.

This article traces the full story: what happened on Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2012, how the controversy played out, and why her surprise Super Bowl cameo with Kendrick Lamar in 2025 was even bigger than the first.

The 2012 Olympics: Serena Williams Crip Walks at Wimbledon

On August 4, 2012, Serena Williams completed one of the most dominant performances in Olympic tennis history. She defeated Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1 in just over an hour to win her first Olympic singles gold medal — and her first major title since recovering from blood clots that had nearly ended her career.

Then, on Centre Court at the All England Club, she did something nobody expected: she crip walked.

It was brief — a few seconds of footwork — but the cameras caught it and the internet did not let it go. Within hours, the moment was on every sports site, every cultural blog, and every late-night talk show.

Why She Did It

Serena and her sister Venus grew up in Compton, California — the exact South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the Crip Walk originated in the 1970s. For her, the dance was not a gang reference. It was hometown.

Asked about it afterward, Williams was direct: she said she was just having fun, that the dance came naturally, and that anyone who saw it as a gang gesture was reading too much into a celebration.

The Controversy

Not everyone agreed. Major outlets ran segments asking whether a "gang dance" belonged on Wimbledon's Centre Court. Some commentators called it disrespectful to the venue. Others called the criticism racist — pointing out that white athletes celebrating in culturally specific ways rarely face the same scrutiny.

The episode became a flashpoint in the broader debate about whether the Crip Walk is offensive, gang-affiliated, or simply cultural expression. Williams herself remained unbothered, and the moment is now remembered as one of the defining celebrations in Olympic tennis history.

The 2025 Super Bowl LIX Cameo with Kendrick Lamar

Thirteen years later, on February 9, 2025, Serena Williams crip walked on a stage even bigger than Centre Court — Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, watched by an estimated 133.5 million viewers in the United States alone.

The setup: Kendrick Lamar — also from Compton — was the headliner. Halfway through his set, as he transitioned into "Not Like Us," his Grammy-sweeping diss track aimed at Drake, the camera cut to a side stage where Serena Williams appeared. She broke into a clean, deliberate crip walk while Lamar performed the song that had defined the previous year of hip-hop.

Why It Was a Cultural Earthquake

This cameo was layered with meaning that hit on multiple levels at once:

• Compton solidarity. Two of the most famous people in the world from Compton, on the biggest stage in entertainment, performing a dance born in their neighborhood.
• The Drake angle. Williams was previously romantically linked to Drake. Her appearing during "Not Like Us" — with Kendrick performing his Drake diss — read as a public co-sign of Lamar over Drake. The internet exploded.
• Generational handoff. If 2012 was the moment the world saw a Compton native bring the C-Walk to a global elite stage, 2025 was the moment the C-Walk arrived at the absolute apex of American cultural attention — and the world was ready for it.
• Vindication. The 2012 controversy had largely faded, but the 2025 cameo retroactively validated everything Williams had said back then. She had been celebrating her culture all along.

"It was beautiful, it was meaningful, it was Compton — and it was Serena. Three things you put together and you get one of the greatest Super Bowl moments ever."

— Widely shared sentiment across hip-hop media after the 2025 halftime show

Serena Williams Crip Walk Timeline

What Serena's Crip Walk Means Culturally

Before Serena Williams' 2012 Olympics moment, the Crip Walk was widely treated as a gang artifact in mainstream media — controversial, dangerous, something to be discussed in the past tense. After 2012, that started shifting. After 2025, the conversation was effectively over.

The Mainstreaming Effect

When the most decorated tennis player of all time crip walks on Centre Court — twice, across two decades, at moments of peak athletic and cultural achievement — the dance is no longer fringe. It is American culture, full stop. That is what Serena Williams accomplished.

Her dance also carried a specific message about Black Compton excellence. The same neighborhood that produced the Crip Walk also produced two of the greatest tennis players ever and one of the greatest rappers of his generation. The dance is the connecting thread.

Why the Internet Loved the 2025 Moment

The Drake-Williams-Lamar layer turned the Super Bowl crip walk into the most meme-worthy halftime cameo in recent memory. Within 24 hours of the show:

• Clips of the moment had been viewed over 100 million times across TikTok, X, and Instagram
• "Serena Williams crip walk" trended in dozens of countries
• Search traffic for the C-Walk and the broader history of the Crip Walk spiked to the highest levels in years
• Drake's social media accounts went conspicuously quiet

That kind of cultural impact, from a few seconds of footwork, is the closest thing modern celebrity culture gets to a perfect moment.

Serena Williams vs Snoop Dogg: Two Compton Super Bowl Crip Walks

Serena Williams was not the first major star to crip walk at a Super Bowl. Snoop Dogg got there in 2022. Comparing the two moments shows how the dance has been used in pop culture:

Both performances cemented the C-Walk's place in mainstream American entertainment. But Serena's 2025 moment, layered with Drake-Kendrick beef and her own past Olympics history, hit different.

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