In a very direct sense, it can seem silly to place real-world import on artistic performances and children’s games, but one of the eternal facts of humanity is that some things matter because we make them matter. The Philadelphia Eagles boatracing the so-called GOAT out of the Super Bowl by halftime has no immediate impact outside the players and coaches whose jobs and legacies are forever affected by last night, but one scroll through this thread recapping the post-game Philadelphia police scanner proves that its reverberations are far wider than the sportsball cynics may make it seem. “Illegal DJ in the highway” is a hilarious phrase that I will forever associate with this great day in American history, and countless people from Philadelphia to Tokyo experienced moments they will never forget last night.
In the same sense, Kendrick Lamar’s provocative halftime show performance doesn’t immediately affect anything other than his and those performers’ bank accounts and careers, but a certain Canadian knows that’s not how culture works. Even though he undoubtedly helped many conservatives soil their diapers last night, Kendrick also surely taught some folks some things, especially about what happens when you are a gross person who hits on minors in public and then picks a fight with a kid from Compton.
A lot of people found a lot of meaning in a lot of what happened last night, and those pointing out the obvious evils of the NFL or the hypocrisies of Kendrick Lamar today are doing an expert job in missing the forest for the trees. Like it or not, this is America.
Which was the point of Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show. There are plenty of takes on what he really meant, and as a longtime Kendrick stan I am familiar with his ability to build a jump to conclusions mat for his fans and don’t want to get too far out over my skis, but I do think there were some obvious choices made for this political moment in a halftime show that ultimately was a story about his life. Donald Trump was at the game, and the first words of the halftime show came from Samuel L. Jackson saying “salutations! It’s your uncle, Sam. And this is the great American game!” as he introduced a guy crouching on a GNX on a lonely street in Compton.
Trump was created by the forces that Lamar has rapped about his entire career, so even if Kendrick wasn’t trying to overtly critique our present moment, he still would have because of how intertwined it is to the story he has told about America. That hedge being said, I will go to my grave believing that building the American flag with Black men and women so he could rap “DNA” in between them and ending it with “sit down, be humble” was a direct message to MAGA, and pivoting to “Euphoria” was Kendrick’s way of telling everyone the overall themes of what we were about to witness.
Namely, hating. Hating on Trump. On who and what created him. On the American economy that built itself on exploited Black labor. On sex criminals. There was a lot of hating at halftime, and it was cathartic. As Audra Heinrichs so eloquently detailed for Jezebel today, it’s a good day to be a hater. That it drove online conservatives to do their tired “I don’t like that a Black person is on my TV shtick” made it even sweeter.
Saying DEI with the hard R
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— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Despite the superficiality of a commercialized rap feud culminating at the most commercialized event in American history, real tangible cultural progress was felt last night. Despite conservatives (and idiot Democrats) believing that capturing about a third of the eligible voting public again means that they have a cultural mandate, the Super Bowl halftime show was another reminder that deep down in their bones, Trumpers know they can never control the mainstream culture that thinks they’re a bunch of weird nerds. It’s why they had to build their own media safe space to tell themselves how special they are.
Kendrick made many artistic decisions that were all designed to teach Americans about America because that’s what he does on every album in his bid to honor the tradition of hip hop reporting from America’s forgotten zones. The great American game that Uncle Sam told us about to open this performance was a double entendre, and per Kendrick’s first song “wacced out murals,” this meant that he did not “want y’all to feel this.” He wanted us to think, and he bombarded us with unmistakable images like this one below. As one Bluesky user noted, this shot that Kendrick and his team created in New Orleans is evocative of the Danziger Bridge shootings during Hurricane Katrina.
I think a lot of people missed this second part of the imagery. It makes such an incredible statement!
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— Sure as you’re born (@sureasyoureborn.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 7:51 PM
But as much as this halftime show was about Black performers in red, white and blue outfits and the natural racist exploitation built into the United States that perpetuates itself and creates people like Trump, it was also about the joy in the face of that struggle and a celebration of the culture that literally built this country. A life defined by despair is no life at all even if circumstances surround you with it, and as centuries past have taught us, joy is a weapon to which nihilism has no counter for.
And boy howdy can Kendrick Lamar wield joy as a weapon. He had plenty of fun proving throughout the feud of the century that real haters know the only way to survive as a hater is to find the community and fun in it. Literal hating leaves people bitter and resentful like a certain reclusive Toronto resident who can probably never leave his house again.
Playing a couple notes from “Not Like Us,” then smirking at the camera like he’s Jim Halpert before transitioning into “luther,” a pop song that’s better than any of Drake’s pop songs (because SZA is a superduperstar), is some peak haterdom. And that was Kendrick’s appetizer. Just as he wrapped up his pop hits with a pop star and Uncle Sam was congratulating him on taking the “nice and calm” track that Drake’s career took, those damn horns sounded again, and Kendrick dove into the moment everyone was waiting on the edge of their seats for.
After another Halpert-esque wink to the camera, King Kendrick finally earned the moniker on America’s biggest stage, as he produced a cultural moment unmatched in my 38 years on this planet. The next 105 seconds was spent with millions (billions?) of people from around the world dancing on Drake’s reputational grave, including a colossally devastating cameo from Compton’s own Serena Williams (who used to date Drake), producing perhaps the most surreal moment in Super Bowl history. It was either that or when Kendrick Lamar, wearing the biggest shit eating grin of all time and Atlanta’s signature “a” around his neck as his personal Super Bowl trophy for where this feud began and ended, built 65,000 people up to call Drake a pedophile and then scream “a minorrrrrrrr” at the top of their lungs.
No living person ever lost a rap feud worse than Drake. Watching a guy who hits on 17-year-olds at his own concerts get humiliated more than any human ever has in front of a presidential administration overflowing with sex criminals was a moment. It was a reminder that as much as politics may dismay us, culture has real power independent of it, and carries a reputational weight with a far wider swath of people than politics can match. Whether Kendrick meant to or not, Trump got a ten-minute lesson in racist American exploitation as an overt rebuke to his very essence, and then the entire country celebrated the reputational death of a gross sex pest, further isolating the self-described pussy grabber under America’s brightest lights, all while he had to just sit there and seethe as everyone around him had the time of their lives.
Every act of resistance is meaningful. Finding a moment of happiness in the midst of an administration trying to immiserate everyone who is not a rich white man is an act of resistance. Opening one of the most highly anticipated halftime shows in history in front of the racist Fox News president with an image of America’s longtime exploitation of Black labor so clear that his addled brain can understand it, is an act of resistance. Creating space for more people to laugh at bad people getting what they deserve in a world run by bad people is an act of resistance. This is an age that demands we stay on the battlefield in whatever ways we can to defend the most vulnerable, and as Kendrick Lamar’s set summarizing his career demonstrated, joy is a central part of that struggle.
Even though it was just a game, there is real joy to be found in the quarterback who said it would be “cool” to play in front of Trump looking like a clueless jackass who didn’t belong on the field. There is joy to be found in MVP quarterback Jalen Hurts, who campaigned against Trump, just burying the Trump-approved quarterback every time Mahomes threw the ball to the wrong team. There is joy to be found in the mathematical fact that Serena Williams spent more time on the field than professional sexist and part-time kicker Harrison Butker did yesterday. There is immense joy in my community today after watching our hated rivals face-plant so badly in the Super Bowl that only we and few other fanbases truly understand the kind of soul-crushing humiliation they went through last night. Oh, you won back-to-back Super Bowls and then got embarrassed by a bird mascot in another one? Do tell scumbags!
Whatever kind of happiness you feel today, feel it. Take this energy going forward, knowing there are millions of allies all around you who don’t want to live in a bigoted, ignorant world run by sex criminals. The hashtag resistance failed in a cultural way by self-inflicted cringe, but electorally, Democratic leadership is wrong and the resistance to Trump was very successful the first time around. Resistance is not futile, and finding happiness in the age of Trump is not a crime. Last night was a lot of fun for a lot of people who oppose everything that Trump stands for, and these cultural moments are powerful acts of resistance to a politics that can never control them.
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