Lil Wayne Says NFL Had Him Jump Through Hoops, Only to Give SB Show to Kendrick Lamar

Nearly 133 million people watched Kendrick Lamar diss Drake during this year's Super Bowl LIX halftime show ... but Lil Wayne swears he wasn't one of them!!!

The legendary rapper is claiming the NFL dangled the opportunity in front of him, only to flip the script and claim they weren't in control of the prestigious show ... while squaring the blame on Jay-Z and Roc Nation!!!

If you recall, Wayne had been campaigning for the hometown SB halftime gig in New Orleans for more than a year, only to reveal how much the snub gutted him in a very public fashion.

While talking with Rolling Stone, Wayne says the NFL persuaded him to be more visible on the celebrity scene, which found him out of his comfort zone -- hanging with Tom Brady and hitting Michael Rubin parties.

"To perform, it’s a bunch of things they’re going to tell you to do and not do, asses to kiss and not kiss," Wayne told the pub ... "I ain’t Drake. I ain’t out there smiling like that everywhere. I’m in the stu’, smokin’ and recording."

Wayne also says someone at the NFL hit him up directly to tell him, "We ain't in charge."

Speaking of Drake and the NFL, the Toronto rapper amended his UMG lawsuit to include Kendrick's performance of "Not Like Us" on Thursday -- a song Wayne was spotted rapping onstage but claims he had no clue there was even a battle happening!!!

“I went onstage and I was singing this song, and they thought I was dissing ... I ain’t want [Drake] to be mad at me,” Wayne says. “I didn’t even know it was Kendrick!”

Wayne says he opted to play pool with longtime Young Money rapper Lil Twist and smoke weed ... "Every time I looked, it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on. They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it. It was perfect."