Photo: Kendrick & dancers at the Super Bowl | By Nadira Goffe, Slate | 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.” . . .
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Read the full article here:
https://slate.com/culture/2025/02/kendrick-lamar-halftime-super-bowl-drake-2025.html
[Old guy editor’s comment: I couldn’t understand what he was singing/rapping, and the Closed Captioning went by too fast to read BUT, as a former dance teacher, the Choreography by Charm La’Donna was PHENOMENAL!!!)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kendrick-lamar-gnx-super-bowl-halftime-breakdown-1235261755/
Photo: Kendrick Lamar | https://www.facebook.com/kendricklamar/photos