By Abigail Holliday
Staff Writer
Kendrick Lamar gave his Apple Music Super Bowl LIX halftime performance at Caesars Superdome on Feb. 9 in New Orleans.
Pulitzer Prize and 20-time Grammy winner Lamar performed in front of many notable people, such as Jon Hamm, Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Taylor Swift and President Donald Trump.
The stage was set up to depict a PlayStation controller decorated with backup dancers dressed in red, white and blue sweatsuits. The performance was kicked off by its emcee, Samuel L. Jackson, portraying America’s Uncle Sam, announcing, “this is the great American game.”
Lamar is also an activist, using his platform and music to get his points across. During his performance, he made comments such as, “The revolution is about to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy.” He also said, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music.” This quote refers to when the Civil War had ended and the slaves in America were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Twenty Black pastors met and decided they wanted to be given land to live on by themselves, so the land was divided and each family was given 40 acres. This order, Field Order 15, was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson immediately after Abraham Lincoln’s death.
Lamar opened the show with snippets of his most popular songs, such as “GNX,” “Squabble Up,” “HUMBLE.,” “Euphoria,” “peekaboo” and songs that feature SZA, like “luther” and “All the Stars.”
Throughout the performance, Uncle Sam kept interrupting and making comments on Lamar and his dancers, saying they were “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” He even asked, “Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?”
Lamar and his team of dancers gave the audience a brilliant visual show, forming the American flag with Lamar in the middle, alluding to a divided country. Lamar also used the red and blue dancers to symbolize the Bloods and Crips, two infamous rival gangs in Los Angeles, according to Rolling Stone.
Lamar teased his five-time Grammy-winning diss track against Drake, “Not Like Us,” saying, “I wanna perform their favorite song but you know they love to sue.”
Fans were worried Lamar wouldn’t play the song during the halftime show under the threat of legal action, but Lamar showed them, and Drake, how he really felt about it. Looking directly into the camera, Kendrick smiled while saying the lines, “Say Drake,” singing the song that won their feud on live television.
Even his clothing held symbolism, wearing a diamond chain with a lowercase “a” on it, which is the logo for pgLang, Lamar’s “multilingual communication company,” but is also the musical symbol for A minor.
Only adding to the snubs at Drake, Lamar brought out his friend Serena Williams, a former professional tennis player and, more relevantly, Drake’s ex-girlfriend.
While the history between Drake and Williams is definitely significant when noting her appearance on stage, the meaning behind her dancing surpasses the Canadian rapper, according to Popsugar. Williams dancing the crip walk on stage was a nod to her controversial 2012 Wimbledon Championship celebration, where the Compton native c-walked and received a lot of criticism, saying the dance was “disrespectful.”
Lamar ended the show with his song “tv off” and brought out Mustard, the famous producer of “Not Like Us” and other songs on Lamar’s new album “GNX,” according to Rolling Stone.
Like Lamar said, his performance was “bigger than the music.”
