On Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Performance...
Throughout last night and today, I have watched the internet collectively lose their minds in every way possible, thanks to Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl. Chances are, your social media feeds have been clogged with terrible takes, memes, attempts at veiled racism, and a ton of revisionist history on Super Bowl halftime performances gone by.
With that in mind, I wanted to speak to two of the biggest arguments I see people making for why it was a bad performance, and clear up that revisionist history on pervious performances.
First and foremost, if your overall take was something along the lines of “Who is this guy?” or “Never heard of him…” then any further argument you try to make is invalid.
Kendrick Lamar has been creating groundbreaking hip-hop records for more than a decade, three of which (Good Kid, MAAD City, To Pimp A Butterfly, DAMN) are regularly ranked on “greatest albums ever” lists. He’s won more than 20 Grammy awards, a Pulitzer Prize for Music (the first non classical/jazz musician to win the honor), and will likely pass Thriller on the longest-charting album list later this year. He is a truly incredible writer, creates uniquely intriguing music, and honestly, should have even more Grammys (To Pimp A Butterfly should have swept the awards).
More recently, Kendrick released a song called “Not Like Us” back in May, which last week became the most decorated song in Grammy history - winning both song and record of the year among other awards that evening. The track outright dominated streaming platforms and culture in general last year, and produced “the” moment of last night’s performance for those in the know.
In very very very brief, the song is a diss record against Drake, calling him a snitch, a culture vulture, ripping him for using AI versions of 2Pac’s voice, and zeroing in on previous accusations of Drake being a…how to put this…sexual deviant. He outright calls him a pedophile (censored during last night’s performance) and delivers one of the most brutal lyrical body blows in the lines, “…tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minor…” (A minor serving a brilliant double entendre). If you rewatch last night’s performance, you’ll hear the entire crowd explode when the song begins (10:20) and they all sing the ‘a minor’ part VERY loud (11:20). Kendrick even called out Drake by name, and in short, this performance is the greatest end to a feud in history.
Also, the presence of both SZA and Serena Williams held significance to the beef with Drake, as both women have complicated, drama-filled past relationships with him. A final nail in the coffin was Kendrick’s necklace - a diamond-encrusted lower case ‘a,’ which can be easily interpreted as the symbol for ‘a minor.’ Clearly, Kendrick had plenty of big and small ways to take shots at his adversary, and for those who understood the context, it was sheer entertainment.
So really, if you don’t know Kendrick Lamar and “Not Like Us,” you’re clearly disconnected from popular culture, and cannot label yourself as someone who “loves music.” Even if somehow you weren’t aware of “Not Like Us” or don’t like his style of music, being unaware of his overall contributions to the past decade of music is nothing more than willful ignorance…and maybe a bit of purposeful racism.
The other argument I see being trotted out is that the performance sucked, with most people in this school of thought labeling it the “worst of all time.” Even if we ignore the first few decades of Super Bowls, which featured marching bands and EVEN MORE marching bands, Kendrick’s performance is still miles beyond many of the “pop music halftime show” era - regardless of your own musical taste.
Have we forgotten the sonic atrocity that was Black Eyed Peas in 2011, or The Who ruining their legacy with an embarrassingly bland performance the year before? If you look at the headliner choices since, you’ll note that The Who were the last “classic rock” band given the honor. My opinion is that their showing was so terrible that producers marked it as the death knell of classic rock Super Bowls - and rightfully so.
But I get it - many of you are sitting there saying you were confused by Kendrick’s performance; you didn’t understand it, “it’s just noise” and similar statements. These echo sentiments that followed Gloria Estefan’s 1999 performance, Shania Twain in 2003, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars in 2016 (I know Coldplay were the headliners, but nobody remembers their performance) and many others.
In the nicest way possible (and some of you may want to sit down for this): EVERY HALFTIME PERFORMANCE ISN’T SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU!
Neither the sport of football nor the halftime acts are owed to a specific demographic…which leads me to my final point:
The NFL is a business. First, second and always, the league is about money. To keep bringing in money, they want to keep their fans happy - and that involves not a small amount of internal data to understand who their core audience is as the years go by. As someone who worked with data in BigTech for more than a decade, trust me when I say you’d be astounded by how much data big businesses collect on their customers, and how much that data directly dictates decisions of executives.
Similar to how the NBA and NASCAR have made adjustments to ways their product has been marketed over the years, the NFL has made their own changes to keep appealing to the audience their data says is most valuable. “Who” that audience is has changed significantly over the past few decades, again seen in the shift from marching bands to pop stars among other ways.
Cementing this point, back in 2019, the NFL made a production deal with Roc Nation (Jay-Z’s company), giving them pretty much full reign over the Super Bowl halftime show. The league clearly had strong data that told them this would be a smart BUSINESS decision, and there has never been even the slightest public questioning of that agreement by either the league or Roc Nation. Clearly, both parties are VERY pleased with how things have been going, and the overall happiness of the NFL consumer.
In fact, back in October the league extended their agreement with Roc Nation with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell going as far as saying, “They’ve been great partners that have provided a lot of value for us.” That’s a business statement - nothing more. If the halftime shows were damaging their business or not generating the expected revenue, they wouldn’t be extending the agreement.
To put it bluntly for the people in the back: these halftime shows are EXACTLY what the NFL wants, because they (the league) believe that it is what’s most attractive to the audience they’re trying to keep happy. If you’re unhappy with the last few years performances, you’re probably not the audience they see as most valuable.
So in closing, I personally thought Kendrick Lamar’s performance was good. It had excitement, it looked different than previous performances, and I was one of the collective “OH SHIT! HE’S DOING IT!” when “Not Like Us” began to play. It was unquestionably entertaining, which is the point of the Super Bowl halftime show.
Finally, for what it’s worth, the best Super Bowl halftime performance ever belongs to Prince. Nobody will ever top that one - sorrynotsorry.
Finally, if you’re not already following me over on Facebook, Bluesky or Instagram, please do so.
That’s all for this week. As always, share and enjoy.