Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and yeah, the Philadelphia Eagles denied the Kansas City Chiefs a three-peat at winning the biggest football event of the year. But sandwiched between the game’s four quarters was a spectacular performance by rapper Kendrick Lamar. Lamar’s performance transcended sports circles and was the talk of the internet last night. For most, it was a final nail in the coffin of the rapper’s highly-publicized beef with Canadian rapper Drake, but it also had a lot of commentary on the state of America, with President Donald Trump in the audience.
Let’s get the collective cultural catharsis out of the way first. The viral moment of the show was Lamar performing his now five-time Grammy-winning song “Not Like Us.” The song is one of many Lamar released during a public feud with Drake back in 2024, and has become a cultural phenomenon. With over a billion streams and multiple clips of entire crowds performing it (including the Grammy’s audience), millions of people are celebrating a song that accuses Drake of being a culture vulture pedophile in reference to years of allegations of grooming young women in the entertainment industry. The song is a scathing diss on its own, but when it goes on to become a record-breaking, award-winning hit, that’s when you know you’ve lost the rap battle.
Lamar’s performance of “Not Like Us” was a big moment for the show in a few ways. At the midpoint of the show, Lamar had a brief intermission with some of the show’s dancers, during which he said he wanted to “perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” while the instrumental “No Like Us” briefly played. This was seemingly a reference to Drake’s multiple lawsuits regarding the song, and at first, it seemed to imply that Lamar was barred from playing it at the show. He then transitioned into a medley of “Luther” and “All the Stars” featuring the immaculate R&B singer SZA, my queen, and it seemed like that was it. Lamar would omit his biggest hit seemingly to avoid further controversy…until about three minutes later, when he went to chat with his dancers one more time, said this was “bigger than the music,” and that someone “tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.” Again, this was seemingly about Drake’s lawsuit trying to muzzle the song’s cultural impact.
Then he starts rapping and the crowd goes wild. In Super Bowl halftime shows, artists have to trim down their songs to maybe a minute or two, and the section of “Not Like Us” Lamar chose to perform is the most explicitly aimed at Drake, even calling him out by name. One popular meme is the point when Lamar looks into the camera with a devilish, shit-eating grin and says, “Hey Drake, I hear you like ‘em young.” The word “pedophile” was left out of the song, replaced by a wordless shout in the live show, but he still had the entire Caesars Superdome crowd singing along to, “Trying to strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor.” Fatality.
Lamar’s cocky strut while he smiles into the camera became an instant meme, but the entire show was a victory lap in a year-long campaign to bury Drake.
Hopefully not lost in the sauce is that this was also a commentary on the state of the United States and its attempts to silence Black voices. Samuel L. Jackson made multiple appearances during the show as the U.S. propaganda character Uncle Sam. He starts off emphasizing that the Super Bowl is “The Great American Game,” followed by Lamar rapping the GNX teaser that was released before his latest album, but has yet to be put on streaming services. However, he included a new lyric: “The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” This was seemingly a dig at fear-mongering President Donald Trump, who was in the audience but left during the second half.
Uncle Sam returns after Lamar performs “Squabble Up,” one of his more rap-heavy tracks, and calls it “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” Then Lamar’s dancers, dressed in red, white and blue, arrange themselves to look like the American flag while he raps. Uncle Sam shows up a few more times to berate Lamar for not playing up what America believes the Super Bowl to be about. After the SZA medley, Sam appears one more time to say that “nice and calm” melodic songs are “what America wants.” He then proceeds to drag Drake across an entire football field. . As incredible as it was to see Drake get bodied on the biggest stage possible, this was a critique of the current state of America and the country’s history of policing Black art and voices. A lot of fans are hoping the overarching message of the show isn’t lost.
Lamar has had an incredible year and isn’t slowing down. Both he and SZA are preparing to embark on a co-headlining tour starting in April, and after seeing this show I might be about to buy tickets. Stream GNX and also SZA’s Lana.