Eminem Picked Wu-Tang for the Lions' Thanksgiving Halftime

The Detroit Lions announced Sunday that Wu-Tang Clan will headline the Thanksgiving Halftime Show powered by Verizon at the 87th annual Thanksgiving Day Classic, when the Lions host the Chicago Bears on Thursday, November 26 at Ford Field. The game, presented by Ford, airs nationally on CBS at 1 p.m. EST. Actor and recording artist Antonio Cipriano, a Michigan native, will perform the national anthem.

The booking is the story. For the second year of a multi-year partnership, Eminem and his longtime manager, Shady Records president Paul Rosenberg, serve as the show's executive producers and select the talent — and this year's pick is the group they grew up on. "We often like to do things that are both exciting and unexpected. A Wu-Tang Clan Thanksgiving performance in Detroit certainly fits that description!" Rosenberg said in the Lions' announcement. "Both Eminem and myself have been Wu fans since the early 90's along with a whole generation of Detroit football fans, and we are honored to bring them to this year's stage."

The bar for this stage is already high. Last year, the first under the partnership, Eminem joined Jack White on stage during halftime of the Lions–Packers game, Bleacher Report recalled in its coverage of Sunday's announcement — a surprise appearance that became one of the holiday's defining football moments. Lions president and CEO Rich Haddad framed this year's booking the same way: "Our Thanksgiving Day Classic is one of the greatest traditions in sports, and Wu-Tang Clan is one of the greatest performers in music. We are thrilled to have Wu-Tang headlining our Thanksgiving halftime show and grateful to Marshall and Paul for their partnership."

The timing gives the performance a weight no regular halftime booking carries. Wu-Tang Clan arrives in Detroit while wrapping its global farewell tour, "Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber," and on the heels of the group's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The catalogue behind the name, as the Lions' announcement itself puts it, runs eight group albums — three of them quadruple-platinum — and more than 85 full-length releases once the members' solo projects are counted.

Founded on Staten Island in the early 1990s and touring as a unit since its 1993 debut, the Clan — RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, U-God, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck, Cappadonna and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard — built what the Lions announcement calls a cultural empire spanning clothing lines, video games, books and film and television work. On Thanksgiving, that empire gets twelve or so minutes in front of one of the largest regular-season television audiences in American sports.

The Music Desk's read: the stake is finality. A farewell tour plus a Hall of Fame induction in the same month means November 26 is close to the last time the full Wu-Tang Clan plays a stage this size, on a broadcast this big — and Eminem, who could have booked anyone alive for his hometown's signature game, used the pick on the group he has been a fan of since the early '90s. That is not a halftime show. That is a curator putting his own record collection on national television, one last time, before the tour ends.