Without exaggeration, I am one of Kendrick Lamar’s biggest fans. I grew up twenty minutes away from his hometown and have been surrounded by his deep-seated influence in Los Angeles since I can remember. As such, he’s been my top artist for years, and I’ve eagerly followed him to concerts and festivals.
As a superfan, I’ve found that his haters’ favorite argument against his genius lyricism, exciting beats and important messaging is that he’s merely handed accolades because of the support that he’s amassed. Another side of the retaliation, led by Drake lovers and even Drake himself, is their consistent dilution of Lamar’s political activism. I believe that his Super Bowl halftime performance this Sunday is the perfect evidence to prove them wrong on both fronts.
On Sunday night, Lamar was accompanied by a team of dancers wearing red, white and blue, as well as Samuel L. Jackson dressed as the iconic American figurehead Uncle Sam. Jackson opens the performance by describing the Super Bowl as the “great American game.” Anyone familiar with Lamar’s intentions likely grasped that this reference was about more than football as a patriotic symbol — it was a comment on the race relations, political division and socioeconomic disparities that have shaped our nation since its conception. The game controller-like setup he performed on further contributes to the idea that average Americans, specifically marginalized individuals, are merely players in the hedonistic rat race of our modern capitalist society.
After kicking off the performance with a snippet of unreleased music, Lamar made arguably his most jarring statement of the night: “The revolution’s about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” Inspired by Gil Scott-Heron’s “Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Kendrick Lamar’s sentiment mirrors that of the original song. The rapper, hyper-aware of President Donald Trump’s presence at the game and his role in the current political turmoil, stated that revolution is imminent because of who we picked to run our nation (the “wrong guy” in question.) This time, however, the rebellion will not be an underground, unseen event, but a movement that causes the disruption necessary to actually spur change. The imagery established by his dancers is equally as striking. Adorned in our country’s colors, they arrange themselves in the shape of the flag, initially as a unified front and then as a broken one. The symbolism here is obvious; can we exist as the United States of America if our nation is divided?
Uncle Sam then reappears to challenge Lamar’s performance, claiming he’s too loud and too ghetto. By including this moment, the rapper gets ahead of the slander he knows will inevitably come following the game. If you claimed to be unable to understand Lamar or thought the show was too political for the Super Bowl, the artist makes it very clear you are not his intended audience — not only through the underlying meanings of each symbol, but also through the utilization of blatantly spelled out messages. Before the show even starts, lights in the stands spell out “warning, wrong way,” a hint to Lamar’s tendency to address taboo topics and unflinching willingness to publicly call out injustice. Jackson’s character also represents America’s overwhelming fear of Black resistance, for Lamar’s art inherently defies all that is comfortable.
He momentarily appeals to the pacifists by slowing his performance down, bringing SZA out to perform two of their most popular hits together. It is a notably different vibe than all that precedes it, which Uncle Sam acknowledges with praise for the milder tone. But a Kendrick Lamar retaliation never fails to disappoint (plenty examples of which were created during the Drake-Kendrick feud), and he immediately dives into the work that got him to the Super Bowl in the first place: “Not Like Us.”
To anyone unfamiliar with the record, it's a five-time Grammy-winning Drake diss track with so much influence it’s become the unofficial anthem of Los Angeles. While there are moments in the performance in which Lamar soaks in this massive win over the Canadian artist, he uses these last few minutes on stage to take a bolder stand. His beef with Drake was partially fueled by the man’s morally questionable actions, but it was more so driven by Drake’s fundamental inability to understand Black American culture, despite his attempts at emulating it in his art. In “Family Matters,” the only memorable song he released during the feud, Drake states that Lamar raps like he’s trying to set the slaves free, a superficial and demeaning reference to the rapper’s political activism. Lamar uses “Not Like Us” to explain why this sentiment is further proof of Drake’s inadequacy as an artist in the hip-hop scene, ultimately solidifying his own position as the greatest currently rapping.
I love many things about this performance (maybe even everything), but what I love most is Kendrick Lamar’s ability to simultaneously deliver an entertaining performance and a political call to action. He ends the night with one of his newer hits, titled “tv off,” and because I’m relatively certain Lamar does nothing by accident, there is a reason this is his last song. As previously mentioned, he stated that the revolution would be televised this time around. By ending with the repeated phrase “turn this tv off,” he’s hinting at the idea that this was our wake-up call. His act is meant to be the driving force for change, and now it is our turn to manifest these messages rather than remaining idle and waiting for some idealistic signal. Ultimately, I believe that if there is one, Lamar’s performance is it.
Mia Roman-Wilson is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at mromanwilson@cornellsun.com.
