“Doesn’t do anything for me,” my dad texted me after Kendrick Lamar headlined the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show on Sunday night at New Orleans, LA’s Caesar’s Superdome.
“Why is he talking about Drake? Do they have a song together?” asked a curious but unfamiliar friend tuning in.
“Can you explain ‘a minor?'” another text message inquired before long.
“That was kinda boring honestly,” said a comment on my Threads feed. “I wish I knew more of those songs.”
I was still trying to wrap my head around what I had just seen from the perspective of a longtime Kendrick fan well versed in the last year’s unlikely series of events that led to his domination and, in many ways, transformation of hip-hop culture (and American culture as a whole) over the past 12 months.
Every detail of this show had felt deliberate and loaded, every nuance accounted for—often on multiple levels. This performance was thoroughly, characteristically Kendrick Lamar—bold, unapologetic, provocative, thematically and metaphorically ambitious, straddling the line between prophetic and surreal while managing to put the cultural and societal zeitgeist under a microscope. Rather than playing all his biggest hits, he strung together mostly newer material in novel ways. It was relatively “simple” from a production standpoint, but the layers of significance baked into its every detail could fill volumes.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion about this Halftime Show in the hours and days that followed, but hitmaker T-Pain‘s reaction is probably the one that best mirrors my own. In a video posted the next day, he responds to the performance in real-time like he’s watching a prize fight before summing up his feelings: “That was incredible. That may have been the most simple halftime show I’ve ever seen. Not that it wasn’t… It was, it was good, but for some reason, oh my God, it was impactful as s—! He didn’t really do s—, and he f—in didn’t need to, that’s the crazy part.”
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But if you’re like my dad (who’s never listened to a lick of hip-hop but can certainly grasp a good metaphor), my other inquisitive friends (whose brains are blissfully unburdened by rap beef minutiae), or one of the many folks tuning in who had (in theory) never seen or heard anything like this, I can understand having watched this show and felt… confused? Context was crucial to appreciating the immense significance of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl gig.
Rather than trying to break down every layer of meaning in the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show—we’ll let online sleuths and more knowledgeable hip-hop writers handle that—I’ll give you the “what did I just watch?” significance starter pack I shared with Dad (a la Chet Hanks). If you (or your pops) were confused on Sunday night, you might appreciate the breakdown, too:
So, Dad, this guy Kendrick Lamar has been one of the most respected rappers in the world for years. His music is full of vivid storytelling about growing up in Compton, parables illuminating societal woes, and vulnerable internal struggles with anger, greed, fear, and systemic disenfranchisement. He’s a deep thinker, a gifted writer, a sage voice in the cultural conversation.
He was never the most commercially successful rapper, though. For years, that distinction was firmly held by Drake, a radio-friendly, glossy, some might say sleezy foil to Kendrick’s more stoic aesthetic.
Last spring, long-running tensions between the two rappers ballooned into a full-blown feud and sparked a back-and-forth flurry of insult songs—diss tracks—from both artists in a brief span. While both landed some meaningful blows, Kendrick eventually won the war of words with “Not Like Us”. The song’s lyrics are vicious—in it, Kendrick addresses Drake by name, calls him a “certified pedophile” based on widespread rumors and allegations, and lets his clever lyricism deliver a crushing blow: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably ‘a minor.'” I know. Ruthless. But, you know, it’s a rap diss track. This is how these tend to go. It’s all part of the game.
But “Not Like Us” quickly eclipsed all the other 2024 Kendrick/Drake jabs. It became a smash hit, thanks to both Kendrick’s rhymes and the song’s hair-raising “beat”—that’s all the music beneath the rapper on the song—made by this great producer, Mustard. It played on the radio in heavy rotation. It blared from sports stadium speakers during games, often prompting tens of thousands of people to howl, “a minorrrrr.” You can bet that Drake was furious every time he heard it. It probably didn’t make him feel any better when the song earned Kendrick five Grammy Awards, including for Song of the Year and Album of the Year—the first brazen character assassination to earn those esteemed honors. The runaway success of “Not Like Us” also helped earn Kendrick Lamar the Super Bowl Halftime Show, making him the first solo rapper ever to book the high-profile gig.
In January, Drake filed a lawsuit against his and Kendrick’s shared label, UMG, alleging that it conspired to make a viral hit out of the, um, unflattering song. And sure, he’s within his rights to do that if he wants, but in a rap beef, that’s pretty much the lamest move you could make. If Drake hadn’t lost his clout battle with Kendrick already, the lawsuit was the nail in the coffin.
But the lawsuit also added a new layer of intrigue to Kendrick’s fast-approaching Super Bowl Halftime Show. Was he legally allowed to perform “Not Like Us”? Would the NFL be cool with him calling Drake a pedophile at the biggest televised event of the year? Sure, they played five different snippets from the track as Lamar accepted his five Grammy Award wins the week prior—complete with all the biggest names in the music world singing “a minorrr” in the audience—but he never actually performed it. Going into the Super Bowl, many people were genuinely unsure if the show would include Kendrick’s biggest, most controversial hit.
Kendrick knew that, though, and his Halftime Show poked the bear to perfection. Midway through the show, he hinted at the situation in a back-and-forth with a group of background singers:
Kendrick (a.k.a. K.Dot): Ladies?
Ladies: Yes, Dot?
Kendrick: I wanna make a move.
Ladies: Fosho!
Kendrick: I wanna perform they favorite song, but you know they love to sue.
Ladies: What song?
*”Not Like Us” intro plays—four simple violin notes now huge enough to encompass the zeitgeist*
Kendrick: Yeah, that song. Ah, maybe I’ll think about it. … I’ll slow it down.
No, you can’t just let them have it. You’ve gotta create suspense. He did eventually wind up performing the song later in the show, and even though he didn’t actually say the word “pedophile,” the entire stadium roaring “a minor” on cue more than conveyed the message. Plus, he definitely looked into the camera and smiled wide when he said the line, “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young.” Instant meme material.
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But honestly? My favorite part of the “Not Like Us” story at the Super Bowl was the fact that he played it second-to-last instead of using it as the finale. Instead, he closed the show with “TV Off“, a newer Kendrick/Mustard song that didn’t need help from Drake insults to become a Top 10 hit. “Turn this TV off,” Kendrick repeated with Mustard at his side as the stage lights cut out and the words “Game Over” lit up the crowd. How about that for a mic drop on this whole messy “battle” with Drake?
Well… yeah. I know. All of that stuff is messy. No… Dad, yeah, obviously it’s not so nice that the biggest song of the year was about all of this ugliness. It really makes you think about what’s wrong with the world we live in, right? Right.
Here’s the thing—the “Not Like Us”/Drake stuff was only one of the Halftime Show’s storylines. While Kendrick Lamar was smiling menacingly at Drake on one level, he was putting a spotlight on the darker shadows of our society on another.
During a press conference ahead of his Super Bowl Halftime Show, Kendrick Lamar was asked what his performance would entail. “Storytelling,” he replied. “I’ve always had a passion about bringing on that on whatever stage I’m on—that sense of, you know, make people listen but also see and think a little.”
“Not Like Us” was an unusual song compared to Kendrick’s previous work. His various albums are almost all concept albums that use extended metaphors and spoken-word skits to tie the songs together as cohesive bodies of work. One of them even became the first rap album to win a Pulitzer Prize. Those concepts are often dense and complicated—to digest a Kendrick Lamar album is to listen over and over again, picking up new details and angles and metaphors each time. That’s sort of his whole aesthetic: You may not always get what he’s trying to say at first, but every word he raps is deliberate and pointed, and every artistic choice he makes seems to carry deeper meaning. Even “Not Like Us” goes on from the “a minor” line to lay out a detailed allegory for Drake as a sort of hip-hop colonizer.
You could think of the Halftime Show as Kendrick’s attempt to contextualize the Drake beef and “Not Like Us” within a larger body of work. By stringing it together thematically with a slew of other new songs and adding layers of social commentary and visual Easter Eggs, he brought his unlikely hit under the umbrella of a more concerted artistic statement.
Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl Halftime Show Easter Egg Breakdown – New Rockstars
I know it was mostly just people in solid colors doing pretty simple choreography. But there was so much going on in plain sight that took on added meaning through a contextual lens.
Listen to Lamar’s “mission statement” from early in the show, which borrowed from Gil Scott-Heron and made it clear that this was not going to be your typical Halftime Show: “The revolution ’bouta be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy.”
Look at the cast: For the first Super Bowl in years to not include the words “End Racism” painted in the end zone—the first Halftime Show attended by a sitting President (who happens to be actively gutting diversity measures)—Kendrick Lamar fielded a huge team of Black dancers to evoke the life of Black people in America to the soundtrack of a largely Black art form on the most mainstream stage in the media universe.
Look at the stage: Four platforms shaped like the four buttons on a PlayStation controller (circle, square, triangle, x) placed on a stark urban street, casting existence in America as a game (think Squid Game) masterminded by shadowy figures using peoples’ lives (and art) as dispensable fodder for the sake of entertainment.
Listen to (Uncle) Samuel L. Jackson‘s telling asides, which called back to his role as a detestable house slave in Django: Unchained: After the bravado-guided song “Squabble Up”, Jackson’s antagonist warned, “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto. Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?” When Lamar showed up later with a group of his buddies under a streetlight, Jackson decreed, “Ah, I see you brought your homeboys with you. The old culture cheat code. Scorekeeper, deduct one life.”
Watch the segment featuring SZA: Yet another stadium-sized Black superstar, who helped show that they can play the entertainer for the easier-listening, Top 40 radio crowd if they so choose—just as long as you don’t lose the plot.
Or even look at the brief cameo by Lamar’s fellow Compton native Serena Williams, shown crip-walking during “Not Like Us”: She took heat for doing that dance—once associated with gang culture but now increasingly adopted as a celebratory display in the hip-hop community—after winning at the Olympics in 2012 and later did it again Wimbledon in 2023. She also briefly dated Drake, so they say, adding a bonus veneer of ridicule to the “Not Like Us” saga. Like I said, there are so many layers…
If we’re being completely honest, I’m not sure I understand all the symbolism he was throwing at us. I’m not sure if I ever do with Kendrick. But that’s what makes him such an interesting artist—you’re always looking for more answers. Whether or not you can appreciate rap music, I know you can appreciate that level of creativity.
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So, yeah. It goes deep. I could even go into more detail if you wa— …yes, I know this hasn’t been brief to begin with. I never said it would be, I just said I’d try to explain. I mean, you asked, right? You didn’t? I could’ve sworn you did.
Oh, well. Talk to you later, Dad. Give Mom a hug for me.
View the setlist and watch the full Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show below.
Setlist: Kendrick Lamar | Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show | New Orleans, LA | 2/9/25
Set: New Verse (Bodies), Squabble Up, Humble, DNA, Euphoria, Man at the Garden, Peekaboo, Luther [1], All the Stars [1], Not Like Us, TV Off
Notes: [1] with SZA
Kendrick Lamar w/ Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, More – Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show – Full Video
Kendrick Lamar and SZA will head out on a lengthy stadium tour this year billed as the Grand National Tour. For a list of dates and ticketing information, head here.