Kendrick Lamar is no stranger to the bright lights, nor to the critics that accompany them.
Nearly a decade before commanding the stage at the Super Bowl LIX halftime show in New Orleans, the Compton-born MC made his mark with another politically charged performance. At the 2015 BET Awards, fresh off the success of his third studio album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Lamar dispatched his hit “Alright” while standing on a vandalized police car, an American flag flying in the background. On air the following day, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera slammed Lamar’s performance, ultimately claiming that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.” Two years later, Lamar sampled the clip on “DNA,” the second track on “DAMN.” which went on to top the U.S. charts and made him the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Lamar continued this sentiment throughout the show. As the floodlights came up, the audience was greeted by the sight of Samuel L. Jackson, one of Hollywood’s best and most discordant, dressed as Uncle Sam, an emblem of American propaganda that originated during the War of 1812. Jackson kicked off the performance by welcoming the crowd to “the great American game,” before Lamar launched into an unreleased track previously teased for 2024’s “GNX.”
However, his messages soon came to resemble those of another infamous uncle — Uncle Tom from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” After Lamar finished a rendition of “squabble up,” the camera cut back to Jackson, who accused the rapper of being “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.”
Lamar showed his thoughts on such critics when he presented the audience with his most overt image yet: rows of Black performers arranged to form the American flag, with the rapper smack dab in the middle. The image, combined with Lamar’s first non-rapped words of the show — “the revolution is about to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy,” a nod to Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — signaled the performance’s main commentary: American pop culture’s love for hip-hop contrasted with its fear of the Black artists at its core.
Of course, there is no clearer manifestation of this theme than in Lamar’s long-running feud with Canadian rapper Drake, which was — as many expected — central to the show. Going into the show, many questioned whether or not the crowd would hear “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s most popular recent track, due to the song’s status at the center of an ongoing defamation suit. At the show’s midpoint, Lamar jested, “I want to perform their favourite song... but you know they love to sue.” Instead, Lamar found frequent collaborator SZA on the side of the stage, with the two uniting together for “luther” and “All the Stars.” This delighted both the crowd and Jackson’s character, who proclaimed that “that’s what America wants,” but K.Dot could only be held back for so long.
A true example of the artist’s mastery, it’s only right that the staging of “Not Like Us” was the synthesis of the show’s many messages. “40 acres and a mule; this is bigger than the music,” Kendrick announced as the opening chords rang. “They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.” At first glance, linking Special Field Order No. 15 with contemporary hip-hop culture might seem far-fetched, but it’s the heart of Lamar’s philosophy. By highlighting this order, which was overturned by former President Andrew Johnson, Lamar warns that the same is happening to hip-hop, and thus Black American culture in its entirety.
So, Lamar focuses on “influence” as the key factor that will bring the culture back. While the sight of Serena Williams crip-walking was understood by many as a shot at Drake —the two were a couple in 2011— it was also a reminder of how this cultural robbery has existed in the past. After her victory at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Williams performed the move, much to the chagrin of fans and pundits alike. Lamar argues that Black cultural expression, which has so often been used for the amusement of white Americans, has also been limited for their comfort.
Despite the censorship and corporate nature of the event, Lamar made his point clear. It’s no surprise that the stage itself was styled like a PlayStation controller, with the lights reading “Game Over” as Lamar’s enigmatic figure left the stage. Lamar knows as well as anyone that the game is rigged, and yet he was not deterred. He’s clearly far from being the “wrong guy” to lead the revolution, but he argues it cannot be led by any single actor at all. Instead, Lamar implores fellow influential Black figures to utilize their influence. If he could do it in the most-watched halftime show ever, with the president in attendance, why shouldn’t everyone else?
