He did it. The world was waiting with bated breath to see if Kendrick Lamar—who has been embroiled in a monthslong beef with rapper Drake—would perform “Not Like Us” during the Super Bowl LIX halftime show. Why wouldn’t he showcase the five-time Grammy-winning blockbuster hit on the country’s biggest televised stage? Well, because the Drake-targeted banger essentially accuses the Canadian rapper of being a pedophile, an attack so vicious that it led Drake to, last month, file a defamation suit against Universal Music Group—the label that has licensing agreements with both Drake and Lamar.
While some legal analysts doubted that Lamar would perform the contentious song, and fans hoped that he would, the “Humble” rapper proved he was anything but by taunting audiences on the matter on Sunday night. Instead of verbally burning a Drake effigy for 12 minutes straight, Lamar decided to do what he does best: use his stadium-sized platform to deliver a political message when America needs it most. During Black History Month, with Donald Trump of all people in the audience, Lamar called out the streak of anti-Blackness that pervades this country’s past and present. All while, yes, viewers were on the edge of their seats waiting to hear the infamous lyric “ ‘Certified lover boy’? Certified pedophile.”
With actor Samuel L. Jackson acting as Uncle Sam, Lamar performed some of the hits from his most recent album, GNX—“GNX”; “Squabble Up”—alongside background dancers dressed in red, white, and blue. Between song transitions, he rattled off phrases like “The revolution [is] about to be televised” and protested racism through defiance, continuing on as Jackson’s Uncle Sam interrupted his—in Jackson’s character’s words—“too ghetto” display. Instead of backing down, Lamar had his background dancers get into a color-coordinated formation of an American flag as he launched into hits “Humble” and “DNA.”
But Lamar was well aware of what we all really wanted to see, and he addressed the elephant in the room with a callout of Drake during his first tease of “Not Like Us”: “I wanna perform they favorite song, but you know they love to sue.” He then pivoted, introducing his frequent collaborator SZA to perform the more melodic song “All the Stars.” It wasn’t until Uncle Sam’s next interjection—“That’s what America wants: nice, calm”—that Lamar, characteristically defiant, turned it all the way up.
Because you know what America actually wants? Feet on necks! A takedown so absolute it’s awe-inspiring! Pure hateration and holleration in this dancery! America wants rap, hip-hop, and alllllll the Grade-A beef. Lamar asserted that the political message imbuing his performance is bigger than Drake’s hurt feelings—stating “Forty acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music” before launching into, at long last, his actual performance of “Not Like Us.” At the end of the day, Lamar said Drake’s name and the famous “A minor” line but refrained from uttering the word pedophile during the most watched event on TV.
I know what you may be thinking: If this is such a political performance, why didn’t Lamar perform his most political song, “Alright”—the song that soundtracked the Black Lives Matter protests and has become synonymous with the contemporary pro-Black movement—in front of Trump, at a time when the president and his government of cronies have turned all things diversity-, equity-, and race-related into the ultimate bogeymen?
Lamar is canny. He knows that it’s a balancing act to be able to chide the U.S. for its anti-Blackness and respectability politics, and he knows that what’s needed on the opposite end of the scale is a gold bar of drama. That’s what he accomplished with his performance, which was full of attention-drawing slights at Drake. He brought out tennis legend Serena Williams, an ex of Drake’s who inspired a different beef between Drake and rapper Common, to C-walk during the big song, and he wore a diamond-encrusted chain featuring a lowercase a, most likely to represent the lyric “A minor.” (This was accompanied by dancers running across the field holding flags depicting children pointing to the same lowercase a.) As if that weren’t enough, some fans also believe that the other tunes in Lamar’s set list were intended as sneak Drake disses.
Lamar gave us the medicine with the cake, expecting us to eat it all—and we housed it. Because what he knows is that American culture is Black culture, and Black culture is hip-hop culture, and beef is not about being afraid of paper tigers—it’s about leaving it all out on the playing field.
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