Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Wasn’t ‘Radical,’ But Who Expected It To Be? – Rolling Stone
Source: Rolling Stone
Kendrick Lamar played on the term “the Great American Game” with a polarizing, Samuel L. Jackson-narrated performance that felt like a Spike Lee Joint in music form. Like every Kendrick Lamar offering, the 13-minute set left observers with a lot of takeaways — but they aren’t all good things. Some found his commentary on the Black American experience as poignant, while others saw it as heavy-handed.
The discourse is all over the place, but Kendrick’s ability as a performer is undeniable. There were no backing vocals here. Kendrick marched up and down the Superdome stage more effectively than any player on the Kansas City Chiefs, rapping his vocals without missing a beat. His mic was low throughout his performance, but he still made the most of the moment with clarity, precision, and boundless energy. During his “Not Like Us” performance, right after delivering the line, “Say, Drake,” he intentionally stared at the camera with a sneer that Drake will surely never forget (if he’s ever feeling masochistic enough to watch the performance). I’ve seen Kendrick perform several times; the most impressive thing about his live show is how he methodically chews through an hour of rapid-fire, tongue-twisting lyrics. The same was true in his condensed Super Bowl halftime set; the only thing he omitted was calling Drake a “pedophile,” and that was on purpose.
It’s exciting to see hip-hop get played on the world’s biggest concert stage. The genre’s Super Bowl precedent was set in 2022 with Dr. Dre’s extravaganza, where everyone from Eminem to Snoop Dogg and even Kendrick rapped their biggest, most widely recognizable hits. On Sunday, Kendrick took the show in a different direction. He rapped a still-unreleased song, album cuts “DNA” and “Man at the Garden,” and a quick verse over beatboxing. Despite the outrage of right-wingers over the performance, hip-hop was in the house.
Sunday’s set subverted the traditional “just the hits” halftime show approach to tell a story, centering commentary and symbolism at the core of the set. For many, the rubric of success wasn’t the quality of Kendrick’s performance but the effectiveness of his message. The premise for his set was the Black American experience being akin to playing “the Great American Game” of trying to outrun racism à la Jalen Hurts eluding a rush. It’s fitting that he crafted the theme for a football game, where some drives start five yards away from the end zone, and others start 99 yards away. Similarly, in America, opportunity is unequal by design.
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Kendrick is one of hip-hop’s great conceptualists, often taking years away from music before returning with a new set of meticulously organized songs. Most of his albums present overarching themes interwoven by skits and co-stars like Eckhart Tolle and his fiancé Whitney Alford. Unsurprisingly, he took on the Super Bowl with the same perceptiveness. Sunday’s set wasn’t just him reeling off his most-streamed hits; songs like “Alright” were skipped in lieu of tracks that he feels fit the story of playing “the game.” “Man at the Garden” is an introspective affirmation that we “deserve it all,” while “DNA” was important for him to hammer home the consequences of “war and peace” co-mingling into the Black American psyche.
But, concept be damned, he knew there was one song that had to be in the set: “Not Like Us.” The record-breaking victory lap, which lambasted Drake and had everyone and their Presidential candidate’s mother co-opting the phrase, has been an unprecedented rap phenomenon. We’d never seen a diss song with the legs of the Drake-toppling smash, and fans were eager to see its impact punctuated on the Super Bowl stage. Some viewers tuned in just to see if Drake would get called a “certified pedophile” on the world’s biggest stage. While that didn’t happen, the crowd of 65,719 people got to scream “a minor” to the awe of Tyga and many other attendees. If nothing else, Kendrick got the chance to throw the last bit of dirt on the Drake era.
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“Not Like Us” was the highlight of a set that lulled a bit in the middle. SZA’s mic was definitely on during her guest appearance, but her and Kendrick’s slower tracks bogged down the energy. We get that he and SZ
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