The Super Bowl halftime show is a highly choreographed musical performance sponsored by companies, used to attract people who do not follow the NFL to watch TV to ensure even higher ad prices for Doritos and Dunkin’ Donuts. Over the years, it has provided moments of great spectacle: Prince playing Purple Rain in the rain, Rihanna announcing her pregnancy surrounded by hundreds of dancers, Michael Jackson singing “We Are The World.”
On this Sunday’s Super Bowl (9), it was rapper Kendrick Lamar’s turn, one of the great public intellectuals of this decade – a Pulitzer Prize winner who transforms the possibilities of hip-hop – to make history. He performed in front of a president who has attacked black activism and the communities where Lamar was raised, delivering a performance full of metaphors.
Lamar is in the most mischievous part of his career and at the peak of his mainstream popularity: in 2024, he released a series of diss tracks with Drake, culminating in “Not Like Us” – a song that spent the summer at the top of the Billboard 200 and won both the album and song of the year at the Grammy just a week ago.
“Not Like Us” is one of the most important singles for rap in the last 20 years, breaking records and stacking streams:
The single debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with 70.9 million streams;
1st place for global debuts on Apple Music and Spotify;
It became the fastest rap song to reach 100 million plays on Spotify.
The song attacks Canadian Drake, accusing the rapper of pedophilia, while Kendrick makes a love declaration to West Coast hip-hop.
In addition to the commercial impact, the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar has reignited the spirit of competition among artists within rap. And it didn’t start with ‘Not Like Us’.
In total, there were nine diss tracks (or counterattacks) between Drake and Kendrick. They sparked an online feud, with many theories and interpretations.
And the Super Bowl?
Lamar’s performance drew so much attention that the game almost took a backseat; after all, when the rapper performed at halftime, the Philadelphia Eagles were already leading the Kansas City by more than 20 points. In the end, the Philadelphia team won decisively 40-22, in a game that was considered boring and predictable from the start.
Sources: The Guardian and CNN