I’m trying to figure out why I didn’t like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. I’ve thought about it for the last week. I’ve listened to people explain its genius. I’ve read the pieces extolling its brilliance. I’ve done the required homework on the beef with Kendrick and Drake. I watched the performance again. I didn’t want to write the same reactionary post that everyone else wrote. I’m looking for what I missed.
I understand that music is subjective. Not everyone is going to like what you like. That’s life, and that’s cool! Not everyone likes guacamole. Great, more for me!
But this isn’t about avocados, it’s about the “culture”, which, these days, can whip people into a frenzy. It’s a unique challenge that any Super Bowl halftime act faces—the audience is enormous. Over 130 million people watched Kendrick Lamar perform. You know ahead of time that most of the people you’re performing for are not your fans. You will not please everyone.
But should you at least try?
Kendrick said, “Hell no. Fuck your feelings”, with a wink and a smile—and that’s where I’m caught up. Shouldn’t someone performing at the Super Bowl want to connect with the audience?
First off, I know what you’re thinking, and that line of thinking isn’t helping. Yes, I’m 45 and yes, I’m white, but I’m also a fan of rap music. I fell in love with the genre in the early 90s, when it was undergoing a renaissance, and so was I.
It was 1993 and I was a 14 year-old high school freshman. Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Tribe Called Quest, Naughty By Nature, The Roots, Onyx, Run D.M.C., Cypress Hill, Easy E and E-40 and Wu-Tang Clan all released albums that year, and all of them I gobbled up.
I became a hip-hop devotee. Every new artist, every new album, year after year—it became the soundtrack to my life. Me, a white kid from the suburbs spitting lyrics written by black men who led different lives and saw the world through different eyes. The art form itself worked its way into my heart and became imbedded there—and I wasn’t alone. My friends and I loved it so much we started to make our own music. We freestyled in cars and at parties and started writing songs. In college, I made friends with another white guy who loved rap music and we started writing songs, too. We also performed them at parties, only now we had a sound system.
After college, we started recording our stuff and performed at bars and clubs throughout California. And then, simultaneously, my football career took off and musical aspirations took a back seat. Football was my life, music was my hobby. But my love of hip-hop brought me closer to my teammates, most of whom were black. We had Freestyle Friday battles in the locker room where I represented the only caucasian in the circle. But they didn’t see me as the white guy rapping and I didn’t see them as black guys rapping, either—we were friends who trusted each other and loved the same music. That’s what music does at its best: it knocks down barriers, it doesn’t erect them.
Same as football. In the locker room, everyone is the same: respected for what they bring to the table, not what color their skin is.
That’s what the Super Bowl should represent—the devotion to teamwork and excellence that results in the ultimate prize. Two teams filled with men of different colors, political beliefs, upbringings, religious views, etc—who see each other as brothers, and go to battle for one another because of it. It is a beautiful thing and it’s why people are drawn to sports, and why so many people were watching the Super Bowl in the first place, and, I believe, why so many people didn’t like Kendrick’s performance—on a day that’s supposed to be inclusive, it was very clearly intended to divide.
Folks have been quick to give the backlash a racial motivation, but I think that misses the mark and lets Kendrick off too easy. Racism is an easier way to justify an underwhelming performance than a deeper look at the music itself and what makes it popular.
First off, I appreciate Kendrick’s lyrical precision and breath control and overall skill as a rapper. I may be stuck in the 90s as far as my stylistic preference, but I respect everything he has accomplished and the energy he has galvanized, including the five Grammy’s he just won.
I also appreciate the production, choreography, the GNX car they tricked out, the video game theme, costume design, make-up, lights, etc. It was all flawlessly executed and all the more impressive when you take into account the tight time crunch they are on to bring it to life. This is halftime of a football game, not a two hour concert with your name on the ticket. There are limitations that, more and more, the creative minds behind these performances have been increasingly more effective in overcoming.
I also do respect a good middle finger to the establishment, which much of his imagery suggested. Rock and rap music are, at their roots, supposed to be about sticking it to the man. But that also makes it incredibly ironic. The Super Bowl is the most corporate, establishment-driven event in the history of our country. You may be saying fuck the man, but you’re also cashing his check.
All of the above said, despite Kendrick’s popularity and his recent success, it felt like I was hearing half of these songs for the first time, which is unusual for a Super Bowl show.
When’s the last time you heard a Super Bowl halftime show and didn’t know the songs? Even when its a genre you don’t like, they are usually recognizable songs. I think that was part of the lukewarm response, and it was clearly a choice Kendrick made. He was not doing it for the masses—this was a nod to his fans, which I think is grossly misreading the moment.
Again, this was a choice that the NFL made in selecting Kendrick Lamar for the halftime show over, say, Lil’ Wayne, who is from New Orleans and has a catalogue of certifiable bangers that everyone would have been singing along to.
Instead, Kendrick’s biggest hit was the track “Not Like US”, intended to dunk on rapper Drake, who Kendrick has been beefing with. It’s a divisive song and makes another black man the butt of your joke on a field where football teams operate with the exact opposite ethos. The biggest moment of the performance was the crowd signing a line in unison that accuses Drake of sex with a minor. How is that cool? Yet that’s what Kendrick did with his platform, which shows how gross this feud is and also shows how much Kendrick relies on this beef, and really, relies on Drake’s name to buoy him in his moment of triumph.
Maybe I’m being naive, but isn’t the Super Bowl supposed to bring people together? And isn’t it a football game, not a concert? Shouldn’t this be about the Chiefs and the Eagles and not Kendrick Lamar’s worldview? Maybe that’s the football player in me wanting the hard work of the men in the NFL to be honored.
I guess, after all is said and done, though I love rap music, that’s why I didn’t like the half time show. Kendrick Lamar is a great artist who was invited to play at someone else’s party and decided to give a middle finger to the audience. He got on stage at a packed comedy club and told inside jokes to the table in the front.
“The revolution is being televised,” Kendrick rapped in the first song of his set. “Right place, wrong guy.”
He wasn’t joking.
