Three years ago at the Super Bowl in LA, Kendrick Lamar was the home turf newbie on the halftime show hip-hop dream team of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Eminem and 50 Cent. Today in New Orleans, the top of his game Compton-born Pulitzer Prizer winner didn’t have to share the glory with anyone as he further solidified his dominance of the genre and the culture.
“This is the great American game” bellowed an Uncle Sam clad Samuel L. Jackson as a tic-tac-toe board lite up the stadium and a dancer surrounded Lamar appeared.
Much more a successor to Lamar’s stunning Juneteenth performance in front of a jubilant Kia Forum in LA last summer than that Super Bowl LVI celebration of West Coast rap and the 50th anniversary of the global genre, today’s performance by Lamar was exactly the virtuoso display of catching the moment, the spotlight and the America 2025 that fans, the NFL and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation wanted.
Let’s be honest, as good as Lamar is (and he is so very good) for everyone but Philadelphia Eagles fans, the halftime was guaranteed to be an improvement over the game so far. The Brotherly Love team have been kicking three peat seeking and current champs Kansas City Chiefs all over the field 24-0 in the wipeout first and second quarters. A not impossible but very difficult deficit to climb out of for any team, even the Partick Mahomes-led Chiefs.
“The revolution is about to televised, but you picked the wrong guy,” Lamar proclaimed, planting his flag with hits like’ Humble,’ ‘tv off’ and more. Having said that, just like last year with Usher and Alicia Keys, Lamar was plagued by sound issues that left his vocals buried under the music. Also similar to 2024, the NFL production team went too tight on the headliner and his performers at the start. A multi-tiered spectacle in the stadium often was reduced to awards show scale. Thankfully by the time SZA showed up and the duo did ‘Luther’, the audio glitches and perspective angles were resolved
To that, with an audience that includes a few notables like that Chiefs fan Taylor Swift, Philly girl and former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, Eagles fanatic Bradley Cooper, Adam Sandler, Kevin Costner and the spotlight addicted Donald Trump, Lamar’s halftime show came with more anticipation and perhaps anxiety than any Super Bowl performance in nearly two decades. Even the newly minted and sharp elbowed head of the FCC weighed in with a throwback to Janet Jackson scandalous stint on the Super Bowl XXXVII stage back in 2004.
Given 13 minutes to navigate a widely varied 15-year career in front of the biggest TV audience of the year and with Jay-Z, past collaborator Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion, and Paul McCartney among those watching in the 70,000 full Superdome, the GNX artist seized the elephant in the stadium at one point about halfway through the halftime show
Hot off his big Grammy wins a week ago and his beatdown of Drake in the past collaborators’ multi-track diss war, the big bet was would KDot let loose his Not Like Us lyrics accusing the former Degrassi High star of having sex with minors. “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” KDot smirked – and then went for it.
As Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav noted:
In fact, trying to getting in front of things, the Australia touring Drake had his lawyers drop a pre-response ahead of the halftime show Sunday. Weak against the strength of the halftime show, the dis defeated Drake was hoping to put the legal stakes of the award winning and chart topping Not Like Us in context with the defamation suit he’s filed against Universal Music Group.
“UMG is masquerading as a champion of artistic freedom by calling its actions merely ‘entertainment’, but there is nothing entertaining about pedophilia or child abuse in the real world,” the Rich Baby Daddy performers attorneys exclaimed of the ongoing battle with Drake and Lamar’s mutual record company. “We are confident that the evidence we will ultimately present at trial, including information we’ve already learned and continue to receive since filing the lawsuit, will expose UMG’s gross prioritization of its own corporate profits and executive bonuses over its exclusively signed artists’ well-being and the truth.”
Song strong as one would expect out of the Big Easy and with Beatle Paul McCartney is the stands, Super Bowl 59 had already seen performances earlier from past halftime star Lady Gaga, Terrance Blanchard, brass bands, Harry Connick Jr, the national anthem from Jon Batiste, and a rousing and poignant rendition of Black America’s unofficial anthem Lift Every Voice & Sing by Ledisi.
Or as the great Sam Jackson said today: “That’s what I’m talking about!”
