A Sense of Doubt blog post #3653 - DAMN! The Awe-Inspiring Kendrick Lamar Halftime Show 2025
Fitting to post this on PRESIDENT'S DAY!
I'll be honest: I'm not someone who really enjoys live concerts much. I don't get excited by touring musicians playing songs I've already heard, and I usually actively tune out the pomp and circumstance of the Super Bowl halftime show. So imagine the shock I felt as I tell you that Kendrick Lamar's performance brought me an exhilaration that I haven't felt for a live performance since Prince's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitar solo. It wasn't just a much-needed shot in the arm in the middle of a dreadfully boring game, it was an intricately detailed work of performance art that spoke directly to so many different strands of American history, through both Lamar's lyrics and the visuals on display.
The Use of Red, White, and Blue Has Multiple Meanings
The emphasis on unity overpowering division bleeds into the costuming of Lamar's fellow performers. Everybody involved, including the dancers, is wearing a predominant color of red, white, or blue, usually coordinated in ways that carry a hidden association. Lamar is decked out in all blue, evoking his allegiance to the West Coast, while Jackson is in a suit that's modeled after the infamous Uncle Sam recruitment poster. Even the guest appearances of SZA, Serena Williams, and DJ Mustard show them adorning these colors, with SZA in red while Williams and Mustard wear blue. At first, it's an obvious reference to the colors of the American flag, made more apparent by how the dancers orient themselves to form the actual shapes of the American flag. But on another level, the colors represent the Bloods and the Crips, two prominent rival gangs in Los Angeles whom Lamar brought together in the public eye at his The Pop Out concert last summer. If that wasn't clear enough, Williams does a Crip walk during her appearance, the dance affiliated with the Crips that she has previously received racist criticism for doing after winning tennis matches. So, not only is the color coordination intentional, it supercharges Lamar's overarching message about taking victory laps on a path towards unity in the face of an unjust society.
Kendrick Lamar Made a True and Clear Statement
I haven't even addressed his song selections yet, and yet those serve as a final cherry on top of Lamar's self-critical serving of entertainment. Most of his performance was spent giving us myriad hits from his career, but he did so with a relish for how much he was owning the moment. He mercilessly teased us with "Not Like Us" twice before finally playing it and made sure to smile right at the camera when calling out Drake, which is nothing less than the height of pettiness. I salute Lamar for that. But that somehow wasn't the most audacious aspect of his performance.
That occurred when he capped the performance with the song "tv off" from his new album GNX, following with the sign "GAME OVER" in big lights throughout the seating section as the arena plunged into darkness. His final message to millions of Americans was one advocating them to unplug from the corporate media machine and get together to organize against the powers that be. Knowing that he did so with our current President in attendance, on national television, at the biggest sporting event in the country, this final gut punch feels like nothing less than the clarion call that's needed for the American people to come together to push for the better future we all believe is possible. Or it could be just one final nail in the coffin of the credibility October's Very Own, thanks to a LEGO man with a kung fu kick that should never again be underestimated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2025/02/09/kendrick-lamar-super-bowl-halftime-show/
Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show: ‘Not Like Us,’ Serena Williams and more
Yes, he performed his Drake diss track. Here’s what happened — and who the rapper brought out.
By Samantha CheryHere are three takeaways from Lamar’s set.
He drew heavily from his latest album, ‘GNX’
His set list mostly didn’t stray from his most recent songs, including “TV Off,” “Squabble Up,” “Man at the Garden” and more from “GNX,” the surprise album he dropped in November.
We did get “Humble,” from 2017’s Pulitzer-winning album “DAMN,” as well as “All the Stars” and a certain notable diss track. Speaking of which
Yep, he performed ‘Not Like Us’
Lamar notably rapped his Grammy-winning hit “Not Like Us,” despite concerns that legal risks would stop the song from being performed at the Superdome. Apparently not very concerning!
The chart-topping diss track — which was widely deemed the KO in Lamar’s rap battle with Drake last year — became the most decorated song in Grammy history after it won all five of the Grammys it was nominated for, including song and record of the year. It was also Lamar’s fourth No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
But it’s also at the center of an ongoing defamation lawsuit Drake filed against Universal Music Group, in which he accused his own record label of promoting the song to devalue his brand. (“I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” Lamar quipped.) If the tune’s expletive-laden lyrics were performed uncensored, they could have also posed issues with the Federal Communications Commission, which doesn’t allow language it considers obscene, indecent or profane. Not for nothing, Lamar dropped the word “pedophile,” but he did do the “a-minor” line — sporting a giant grin as he tore into Drake.
Sam, SZA and Mustard
The show opened not with Lamar but with Samuel L. Jackson in a patriotic get-up. “It’s your Uncle Sam, and this is the great American game,” the actor said. Jackson cut in throughout the performance — taunting and urging on the rapper. Lamar was “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto!” Jackson said, giving notes on the set in real time. “Tighten up!” Producer Mustard — who helped make “Not Like Us” — also appeared on the field.
Serena Williams was also there, crip walking and having a good time.
Then there was R&B star SZA, who appeared in all red to sing “Luther,” their recent hit duet. She stuck around for “All the Stars” from the 2018 “Black Panther” soundtrack. Didn’t get enough? The two are touring together this year.
https://andscape.com/features/genius-of-kendrick-lamars-super-bowl-halftime-performance/
The subversive genius of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance
The Compton MC might have just given us the biggest rap performance ever
Kendrick Lamar’s last 12 months have been so full of the phrase “all time” that it started to sound like the hyperbole you’d find in braggadocious rap lyrics. Winner of the greatest rap feud of all time. Most dominant rap beef victory of all time. Greatest rap diss record of all time (twice!). Best year any rapper has had of all time. And finally when he got booked to perform at the halftime show for Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, Lamar became the star of the most anticipated and probably most-viewed solo rap performance of all time.
The pressure was palpable. Lamar was tasked with setting the standard for rap at the Super Bowl while also kicking down doors for more solo acts to follow in his wake. He was also under pressure to execute the global death knell to his most public adversary, Drake — but not too nasty of a way as to not deter from his historic performance. Add in the last-minute pressure to do something as a form of protest while Donald Trump was in attendance, and we have Lamar at the center of a moment that feels like it may last forever.
From Frenchmen Street to St. Charles, the rumblings about what Lamar’s performance would bring ranged from comparisons to Prince’s halftime show in 2007 to speculation that he would do something even more dastardly to Drake than he’s done so far. It seemed like an impossible bar to leapfrog. But over the course of 15 minutes, Kendrick Lamar gave us what we needed. He was defiant, proud, vindictive, playful and celebratory. He was pro-Black and subversive, trolling and joyful, and through all the expectations and fighting and nastiness, he was ultimately victorious. Lamar was aspirational, inviting us along with him.
In short, Lamar was all the things that make him him; and make us us.
When Lamar opened the show with his homies hopping out of his Buick GNX, a metaphor for his neighborhood and homies invading Americana, he’s admonished by Uncle Sam to humble himself. And when Lamar and his dancers formed a human American flag on the field during his smash hit “Humble,” it was clear there was going to be a larger statement about the country when it needs a mirror the most. The question then became how far Lamar would go.
During his performance, Lamar wanted to deliver a message and a series of messages aimed directly at Black folks who are yearning for a place to rest our hearts. It’s what he has done so brilliantly in the midst of his feud with Drake. Part of Lamar’s attack on his Canadian nemesis has been positioning Drake as an extension of an establishment whose goal is to tear down Black folks. Yes, Drake is a colonizer according to Lamar, but it’s not just about that. It’s about getting rid of all colonizers. So when Lamar dropped his most powerful easter egg of the performance — Serena Williams — it was a wink to a particularly Black audience.
Williams has been the target of Drake and America at multiple times in her career. She’s been unfairly targeted for daring to be great, or, in Drake’s case, disinterested in a relationship. During the performance of “Not Like Us,” Williams danced on the field — a middle finger to Drake and timely reminder that Lamar defended her, and the culture, on the song. But if you recall, back in the 2012 Olympics, Williams celebrated her Gold medal by c-walking on the court. The move, an homage to her Compton roots and something Black folks had been doing for ages, became another opening for attack as far too many people accused her of being “ghetto” and too cocky for daring to shout out her hometown and rejoice in victory.
Lamar gave Williams space to reclaim that dance as he was rapping about the ills of folks who don’t belong in the same universe as Black excellence trying to tell us what to do.
It’s that rebellion that fueled Lamar’s performance. A few weeks before the halftime show, Drake issued several legal actions that seemingly attempted to stop Lamar from performing “Not Like Us.” Again, this pitted Drake as something other than part of hip-hop culture because he was trying to silence a fellow artist and stop our collective joy. So when Lamar told us that he knows people don’t want him to perform the song during the show or they’ll sue, Uncle Sam warned the Compton MC not to fly too close to the sun with his pride. It was a conflation of Drake and America that is ironic given Drake’s Canadian heritage, but also a strategic move aided by Drake’s actions.
Lamar’s refusal to be silenced is another signal to us. Just take the gigantic, Joker-like, already-viral smile across Lamar’s face when he said Drake’s name while he performed “Not Like Us.” Look at the way he allowed the audience to say “pedophile” and sing along with tens of thousands of people in a packed Superdome who yelled out “a minor” — one of the more deafening moments of the entire game, let alone performance. Lamar was poking fun at anyone daring to stop his momentum, and encouraging us to do the same.
Christopher Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images
GNX, the album Lamar dropped as a surprise in November, was created for this moment. The songs are massive and were clearly made for a stadium. And they worked. “Squabble Up” and “Peekaboo” fit nicely next to established juggernauts like “DNA” and “All The Stars” (SZA sounded pitch perfect for the two songs she also performed, which can’t be ignored and can’t be lost on Roc Nation decision-makers looking for future talent for the show). But the most surprising song featured during the Super Bowl was “Man at the Garden,” whose refrain “I deserve it all” is another prideful and empowering chant for Black folks. Finally, the exuberance of “TV Off” felt appropriate to end Lamar’s set. And with “Game Over” spelled out in lights in the stands at the end of his performance, it seems Lamar is ready to move on from the most lopsided battle in rap history.
Lamar won and demanded that we find victories in our own battles.
After the no-pun-intended euphoria of the performance had worn off, I found myself wondering why Lamar left off “Alright” — the song that had become a protest anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement and whose lyrics “we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the streets for sho’” he previously censored when he performed during halftime a couple of years ago. Why not give us that moment, too? I hope it was a creative decision and nothing more.
But therein lies the uphill battle of protest music at the Super Bowl. Lamar performed between the end zones where the slogan “End Racism” used to be. A few days before the Super Bowl, the NFL made the decision to remove the slogan, coinciding with a nationwide rebuke of DEI, where Black folks’ accomplishments are questioned as much as ever before. To perform at a halftime show for an organization like the NFL implies a tacit complicity in that type of empire, even in the face of raised Black fists at the 20-yard line. And for a certain sector of the audience, nothing Lamar says or does will erase that complicity. He can’t be all things to all people and we aren’t supposed to ask celebrities to wear freedom on their sleeves at every turn. But Lamar invites that expectation and anticipation with his catalog, and when he opens up shows with one of the world’s biggest rappers dressed as the personification of America.
How our expectations bump up against his actual execution is a societal litmus test. But I can honestly say that I think Lamar is always trying. To see him is to see an artist at his peak trying to give us his best and empower us as much as he humanly can, even though he’s imperfect. In a new era of rap where our once-beloved luminaries are becoming increasingly toothless and disappointing, a guy who is trying to make his biggest moment about us is more than enough to earn respect and feel proud.
I first saw Kendrick Lamar live at a small bar on 6th street at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a decade and a half ago. A couple of hundred fans packed the room and almost caved in the floor when he performed cuts from his Overly Dedicated mixtape. There was something then. An earnestness. A desire to be the best and bring his homies and fans along for the ride.
Now, Lamar’s done all the things rappers say they’ll one day be able to accomplish in their most self-aggrandizing bars. He’s reached GOAT-level status. And he could have made the halftime show a victory lap for himself — he would have deserved it.
Instead, Kendrick Lamar poured into us. It’s that kind of beautiful work that doesn’t go forgotten. That’s how you take the most-scrutinized 15 minutes of live raps an MC has ever had to face and turn it into immortality.
The View's Ana Navarro says Donald Trump will sign order 'banning Black people from halftime' after Kendrick Lamar show
Navarro also claimed that Black people on her social media feeds were calling Lamar's show "Blackity Black Black" during the event.
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ABC; Kevin Sabitus/Getty
The View cohost Ana Navarro thinks Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show made enough of an impact on President Donald Trump that it could inspire swift political action.
After Lamar took the field Sunday night at the Caesars Superdome (where Trump also watched the big game) to perform a politically tinged medley of his songs (also including the supposed Drake diss track "Not Like Us" featuring cameos by Samuel L. Jackson and Drake's ex, Serena Williams), Navarro said on Monday's live episode of the talk show she thinks the whole set might've rubbed Trump the wrong (or, arguably, right) way.
"You know I don't do sports, you know I don't do football. So, I wasn't watching the game. But, listen, I think today Donald Trump is going to sign an executive order banning Black people from halftime," Navarro said as the show's audience laughed.
"You remember last week we were talking about whether the NFL was capitulating to Trump by removing the term 'end racism' from the end zone? Boy, did they not capitulate to Trump," she continued. "When I saw Samuel L. Jackson dressed as a Black Uncle Sam introducing Kendrick Lamar, who then had an entire formation of all Black people making a U.S. flag, listen, this much I know: all the Black people on my feed were like, 'Ooh, this is Blackity Black Black.' All the racists who somehow get in, they were hopping mad. If the racists are mad, I'm happy as a clam."
Navarro's assessment followed Lamar's set, which included himself standing amid dancers wearing red, white, and blue while forming the American flag, as well as the aforementioned Jackson narrating the segment while dressed as an interpretation of Uncle Sam.
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Gregory Shamus/Getty
Trump also made headlines out of the Super Bowl after he shared video of attendees booing Grammy-winning artist (and girlfriend of Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce) Taylor Swift, who attended the game to cheer on her boyfriend, while seated next to rapper Ice Spice and friend Ashley Avignone. In his post, Trump included a video of the crowd, in contrast, cheering for him at the top of the game.
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In the end, the real winners of the night were the Philadelphia Eagles, who crushed the Chiefs with a final score of 40-22. The game also kicked off with an emotional tribute performance headed by Lady Gaga, who, after an introduction from Michael Strahan and Tom Brady, played her Top Gun: Maverick single "Hold My Hand" on the piano on Bourbon Street, where the group was joined by first responders and a gospel choir to commemorate the victims of the deadly January terrorist attack in the same location.
The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET/PT on ABC.
Lamar was joined onstage by SZA, his longtime collaborator and Top Dawg labelmate, as well as his "Not Like Us" producer, DJ Mustard. The performance was narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, who satirically teased Lamar for being "too loud, too reckless, too ghetto" while dressed as Uncle Sam.
Jackson's role underscored the performance's red, white, and blue motifs and American flag iconography, suggesting a deeper commentary on what constitutes "American" music, especially when it's made by Black artists.
Below is every song in Lamar's halftime show setlist, listed in chronological order.
Lamar opened his performance with a teaser from an unreleased song, which fans have tentatively dubbed "Bodies," before transitioning into "Squabble Up."
"Squabble Up" was released as the second track on Lamar's latest album, "GNX," and promoted as the lead single.
It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Lamar the first solo male artist to have three instant chart-toppers in a single year.
"Humble" was released as the lead single from Lamar's fourth studio album, "Damn.," which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
"DNA" is the second track on "Damn." The song famously includes a clip of the former Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera discussing Lamar's lyrics in "Alright" ("This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years").
"Euphoria" was released amid Lamar's recent showdown with Drake, in which the rappers swapped eight diss tracks back and forth.
"Man at the Garden" is the fourth track on "GNX."
"Peekaboo" is the ninth track on "GNX." The studio version features AzChike.
"Luther" is the third track on "GNX." It's one of Lamar's many duets with SZA, a collection that also includes "Babylon" (2014), "Doves in the Wind" (2017), and "30 for 30" (2024).
The pair are set to embark on a co-headlining tour later this year, dubbed the Grand National Tour.
"All the Stars" was released as the lead single from the "Black Panther" soundtrack, which Lamar curated and executive produced. The song was nominated for best original song at the 2019 Oscars.
Lamar's "Not Like Us" was the centerpiece of his beef with Drake. It topped the Hot 100 for two weeks and won five Grammys, including song and record of the year.
During Lamar's performance of the song, he omitted the word "pedophile" but kept other lyrics that directly reference their beef, including "Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young / You better not ever go to cell block one" and "Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minor."
"TV Off" is the seventh track on "GNX." The studio version features Lefty Gunplay, a fellow rapper from Los Angeles.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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