22-time Grammy Award winner Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show for Super Bowl LIX was frenetic, tense, and meaningful. The show opened with Samuel L. Jackson as “Uncle Sam,” introducing the show and serving as the narrator throughout the performance.
Lamar started with his new track “Bodies,” followed up by “squabble up,” a track from his latest album, GNX. With an Americana theme, he crafted a set that was as visually compelling as it was sonically, keeping true to his pre-show promise that the performance would tell a thoughtful story.
“I’ve always been very open about storytelling through all my catalog and my history of music. Whether it’s a world tour or whether it’s 500 people at Key Club, I like to always… make people listen, but also see and think a little.”
– Kendrick Lamar
Dancers dressed in red, white, and blue joined Lamar. But even in their patriotic colors, they were labeled “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” by Jackson’s Uncle Sam, who reminded Lamar to ‘play the game.’ Then, he launched into “Humble,” “DNA,” “Euphoria,” and “man at the garden.”
“Scorekeeper, deduct one life,” interrupted Jackson. Lamar had then popped into “peekaboo” and was next joined by SZA for their songs “Luther” and “All the Stars”. Lamar teased the intro to “Not Like Us” twice, only to deliver at the end with a smirk and a wink to the camera. He rapped atop a Buick Grand National and under a streetlamp, with hues of blue and red flooding past him. He concluded the finale of his show with “tv off.”
It’s hard to underscore the ubiquity of “Not Like Us” – with its billion streams on Spotify, the massive hit is an anthem for Los Angeles, a rallying cry for community and against culture vultures, a diss track that won Lamar the feud with Drake and the track that won song and record of the year at the Grammys last weekend.
Tennis icon Serena Williams also helped out with a cameo during the performance of “Not Like Us,” representing Compton, California, which is where both she and Lamar proudly rose from to find success in their respective careers.
There has been civil discourse surrounding hidden meanings Lamar had implemented into his show. There’s speculation on whether the stage was set up as a PlayStation controller to represent the rapper’s life as though it were a video game, as Samuel L. Jackson stated, “This is the American Game” at the beginning of the performance and ended the show with a “Game Over” sign flashing. However, others believe the stage was a nod to Netflix’s show “Squid Games,” in which the rich bet on the lives of the poor.
Lamar also appeared to take a dig at President Donald Trump, the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. Addressing the audience, Lamar said, “The revolution is about to be televised; you picked the right time but the wrong guy.” This was, of course, referring to Gil Scott-Heron’s acclaimed 1971 poem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which speaks to the black power movement of the 1960s.
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