Still puzzling over whether Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime was good or bad?
Go back to rewatch it. Really. It was a layered and full performance.
Beyond just being a rapper, Kendrick Lamar is also, more than almost any other musical artist of his generation, one of the premiere visual artists of our age. He works with pgLang (it’s short for “programming language”), the multiplatform creative production company he founded with producer and filmmaker Dave Free, to put together his extraordinary performances.
When Lamar steps on stage, his work doesn’t look like work from any other rapper. Even his recorded performance from his last tour, The Big Steppers Tour, was a much-anticipated live event on Amazon Prime.
Here are six things to note when watching Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance again:
- The whole thing was about Drake — except that it wasn’t. Lamar teased multiple times in the performance to his hit song “Not Like Us,” a diss track aimed at the Canadian rapper who calls himself the 6 God. In the song, he disparages Drake as an exemplar of the type of rapper he hates most: One who mines hip-hop and Black American culture for clout and dollars without any real care or respect for the culture. The song, and the halftime performance of it, are an indictment, not just of Aubrey Drake Graham the man, but the record industry, listening public and American culture at large that makes stars out of people like Drake.
Kendrick Lamar wants America to put some respect on Black’s people’s name. That’s a powerful message in a time when the federal government itself seems like it wants to remove the underpinnings of Black American visibility and success. - That car he stood next to at the beginning of his set isn’t just any car. It’s a 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental, commonly known as the GNX. Just shy of 550 of the cars were produced; Kendrick Lamar has No. 191. He loves the car so much that he named his most recent album, “GNX,” for it. The black car was a turbocharged version of the ho-hum Buick Regal. Another important point: 1987 marked the last year of its production — and the year of the birth of one Kendrick Lamar Duckworth in Compton, Calif.
Kendrick Lamar might just be telling us that like the GNX, he’s the last of his kind. - Lamar spoke to us about what unites and divides us. He had dancers clad in red, white and blue, whose choreography suggested the design of the American flag. He stood in the middle of the dancer-flag, highlighting a very real divide in the American fabric.
- The actor Samuel L. Jackson played that most quintessential of American iconic figures, Uncle Sam, urging Lamar to put on a respectable performance that would appeal to the American masses, and admonishing him between segments. Lamar ultimately ignores Uncle Sam, choosing to perform the controversial “Not Like Us,” choosing to stick to his principles over concerns about propriety.
- Lamar wore a jacket emblazoned with the word “Gloria.” It means “glory” in Latin, of course, and is the name of the last song on his new album. The song is an extended metaphor about his love-hate relationship with hip-hop and his own writing. Is it also a metaphor for his overall journey as an artist, which has seen him go from rap purists’ favorite to mainstream star with 22 Grammys?
- Serena Williams and Sza were both part of the show. Williams, like Lamar, is frequently called the G.O.A.T. for her contributions to her area of expertise, tennis. And like Lamar, she’s a native of Compton. She’s no stranger to high-profile cameos; she was in the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris in 2024 and famously twerked in a Beyoncé music video. Sza, the smooth five-time Grammy-Award-winning singer with the cool tones, was Lamar’s co-headliner for the halftime show. The two, who are on the same record label, have collaborated multiple times, including on the Luther Vandross-inspired “Luther” from the “GNX” album.
On their own, these accomplished women are headline-worthy inclusions in the halftime show. It’s a bonus for conspiracy theorists that both are reportedly former girlfriends of Drake.
Kendrick Lamar is nothing if not one of the most layered musicians working today, a peer to his occasional collaborator Beyoncé (fans sometimes affectionately refer to him as “Beyoncé’s work husband”) in the placement of musical references and Easter eggs in his work.
Did you catch all the references in his halftime show?
