{"id":937042,"date":"2025-02-10T19:59:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T16:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=937042"},"modified":"2025-02-10T19:59:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T16:59:31","slug":"kendrick-lamars-fierce-and-petty-2025-super-bowl-halftime-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=937042","title":{"rendered":"Kendrick Lamar\u2019s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Columns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kendrick Lamar\u2019s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show<\/h1>\n
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With his Super Bowl LIX halftime show, Kendrick Lamar brought hip-hop to America\u2019s biggest stage, embracing the art form and its competitive nature.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Clover Hope<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Kendrick Lamar, February 2025 (Gregory Shamus\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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The audience came for blood, but Kendrick Lamar made them wait. With his Super Bowl LIX halftime performance, Kendrick reminded everyone that, despite over 50 years of hip-hop history, rap still struggles for widespread recognition as a legitimate art form. And an important part of the genre is competition. His halftime show embraced that motif, framing America, football, the Super Bowl, and himself as components of a larger machine. The first face on screen? Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam, the show\u2019s narrator and scorekeeper, who declared, \u201cThis<\/em> is the great American game.\u201d Hip-hop is a quintessential All-American sport, too.<\/p>\n

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\"Samuel<\/span><\/div>\n
Photo by Emilee Chinn\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Kendrick opened the performance atop a black Buick Grand National Experimental\u2014the namesake of his 2024 album\u2014wearing flare jeans, locked into a Gremlin stance, and spitting verses mainstream viewers probably couldn\u2019t even Shazam before launching into GNX\u2019s<\/em> \u201cSquabble Up.\u201d He closed with a diss track that had the Caesars Superdome singing along to his pettiest lines, as Serena Williams delivered what had to be the Super Bowl\u2019s first-ever on-field revenge-Crip Walk. The diss record symbolizes utter domination in hip-hop. And so goes America and football. But what do rap and football mean to Kendrick? Drama, sport, spectacle.<\/p>\n

Hip-hop has asserted its dominance on the Super Bowl stage since Jay-Z and Roc Nation began handling production with the 2020 show. Last night, Kendrick stood alone as the first solo rap headliner, less as a critical darling and more as a status symbol of hip-hop\u2019s ascent. Just a week ago, he won five Grammys, including Song and Record of the Year for \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d cementing the Drake diss track as a cultural fixture\u2014something we all already knew. But last night\u2019s halftime show painted Drake as a dispensable henchman and America as the ultimate adversary. His high-octane GNX<\/em> tracks made his set feel more contemporary and less like a legacy performance, \u00e0 la Usher or Rihanna\u2019s recent outings. The show was rich with subtext and loosely political\u2014Kendrick\u2019s reference to Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised\u201d at the start; Jackson\u2019s taunt, \u201cMr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?\u201d For \u201cHumble.,\u201d Kendrick and his dancers formed an American flag with their bodies. Searching for meaning in Kendrick\u2019s imagery can feel vexing when the meaning is more symbolic than overt. Maybe it\u2019s about dominance at all costs. Maybe it\u2019s all just a sick game where the most Kendrick could do was push the envelope as far as the NFL and the televised broadcast system would allow.<\/p>\n

Kendrick also seemed to use his Super Bowl platform to try to dismantle stereotypes about rap (that it\u2019s not a serious genre) and himself (that he wasn\u2019t worthy of a halftime set). The show contrasted sharply with his more plainly defiant Pop Out concert, where he performed \u201cNot Like Us\u201d five times straight, reveling in all things community and California. Here, he toyed with expectations: He ceded the stage to SZA, resplendent in red, to sing GNX<\/em>\u2019s saccharine ballad \u201cLuther\u201d and the Black Panther<\/em> hit \u201cAll the Stars.\u201d Lines like \u201cI hate those that feel entitled\u201d hit a little more menacingly under the Super Bowl lights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Kendrick<\/span><\/div>\n
Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Earlier in the show, Kendrick teased, \u201cI wanna perform their favorite song\u2026 but they wanna sue,\u201d nodding to Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group. Minutes later, Jackson would interject, \u201cYou done lost your damn mind,\u201d before Kendrick finally kicked off \u201cNot Like Us\u201d with a new verse: \u201cForty acres and a mule\/This is bigger than the music,\u201d he rapped. \u201cYeah, they tried to rig the game\/But you can\u2019t fake influence.\u201d Another menacing moment: Kendrick circling his dancers, treating the stage like musical chairs, presumably boring into Drake\u2019s soul through the lens. The line \u201cSay, Drake, I hear you like \u2019em young!\u201d was rapped directly into the camera with a Cheshire grin.<\/p>\n

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\"Mustard<\/span><\/div>\n
Photo by Patrick Smith\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

While Kendrick\u2019s show broadly gestured at political strife and inequity, one of his performers unfurled a flag in support of Sudan and Palestine. The unplanned protest wasn\u2019t\u2014and would never knowingly be\u2014televised, but it was an odd consolation for anyone still placing bets on Kendrick doing something similarly radical with his platform. And Mustard provided the night\u2019s hypest moment with \u201cTV Off,\u201d pantomiming and holding his chain up to the camera in the background to flex. It was the only time Kendrick welcomed a hypeman on stage, highlighting how vital that type of wingman energy is to a great rap show. But in the end, it was Kendrick alone standing victorious over his enemy to the north. As for America, that\u2019s a longer fight for another day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Kendrick<\/span><\/div>\n
Photo by PA Wire\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/kendrick-lamar-2025-super-bowl-halftime-show-review\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns Kendrick Lamar\u2019s Fierce and Petty 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show With his Super Bowl LIX halftime show, Kendrick Lamar brought hip-hop to America\u2019s biggest stage, embracing the art form and its competitive nature. By Clover Hope February 10, 2025 Kendrick Lamar, February 2025 (Gregory Shamus\/Getty Images) The audience came for blood, but Kendrick Lamar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":937044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-937042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/937044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}