This year’s Super Bowl LIX took place at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, featuring a matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The halftime show was headlined by rapper Kendrick Lamar, who was joined by special guests SZA, Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and DJ Mustard. The performance attracted a combined 133.5 million viewers across broadcast television and streaming platforms, the largest audience in the history of the game.
Kenrick Lamar took to the stage to give the world the most politically-charged and revolutionary performance on the Super Bowl stage just after winning several Grammy awards. Lamar created a performance that was a testament to the struggles Black Americans have endured while also celebrating Black resilience, talent, and undeniable cultural influence. Showcasing this performance during Black History Month only deepened its significance by transforming the halftime show into a bold statement on historical and persistent racial injustice.
Kendrick fans would expect nothing less. The Compton rapper has never hid his struggles or ideology in his lyrics. Lamar has a deep-rooted history in Hip Hop counterculture. From his debut album Section.80 to his Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN., he has used his artistry as a vehicle for activism.
Lamar tackles themes of systemic oppression, police brutality, and self-determination. His storytelling intertwines personal experiences with larger socio-political critiques, making his work both deeply intimate and universally resonant. For Kendrick, music finds meaning in truth-telling and revolution.
The Halftime Show
Kendrick Lamar recognizes that in the U.S., Black Folks are expected to conform to the norms of “respectability politics” to succeed in spaces dominated by white people.
Yet, Kendrick separates himself from being labeled as a “sell-out” artist by suggesting through his performance that Black individuals in these “white spaces” have a responsibility to orchestrate acts of resistance to bring attention to the barriers that keep Black folks in an oppressed condition.
The NFL is a White Space
The National Football League (NFL) is a white-dominated institution that profits off Black excellence while producing inequitable outcomes for its Black players and administration. A white-owned league watched by a predominantly white audience, the Super Bowl serves as a spectacle that underscores American values. The presence of Donald Trump at this particular game, the first president to attend a Super Bowl, only heightened the political weight of Kendrick’s performance. Trump, notorious for what many call a racist agenda, represents the very system Kendrick critiques: a game rigged against Black success.
America is Red, White, and Blue
One of the most powerful images of Kendrick’s performance was an American flag composed entirely of Black dancers. This visual metaphor calls attention to how Black labor, often forced and unacknowledged, built America’s wealth and infrastructure. It recalls the historical criminalization of Black communities, with the inclusion of Bloods and Crips imagery. Lamar brings to life the systemic neglect that fosters gang culture. Lamar brings Serena Williams on stage to do her infamous Crip Walk which she did in celebration after winning Olympic gold, a moment that led to discriminatory backlash from predominantly white audiences.
The Great American Game
At the start of the show, Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam comes on stage and welcomes the audience to the “Great American Game”. But, Uncle Sam doesn’t mean the Super Bowl, he means the rigged economic, political, and social system that has kept Black Americans in a disadvantaged condition for all of American history. Just as the NFL profits off Black bodies while denying them true agency, the American system at large has exploited Black labor while denying Black people full participation in democracy, economic mobility, and social equality.
Kendrick’s reference to “40 acres and a mule” in his lyrics contextualizes his performance within America’s historical failures to deliver on promises of racial justice. His nod to systemic barriers of economic and political suppression reveals how Black individuals are set up to fail. The Squid Game costume, a striking visual element easily understood by the Super Bowl audience, suggests that America functions as a game master. The U.S. orchestrates conditions that push Black communities into cycles of crime and violence, only to vilify them for the outcomes. The mass incarceration of Black Americans serves as a prime example of this systemic entrapment, proving that the “game” has always been rigged.
Samuel L. Jackson: Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom?
Samuel L. Jackson’s presence in the halftime performance was just as powerful as it was unexpected. Jackson is an actor with a long history of activism and advocacy for the Black cause. However, he also represents the Black elite; the class of Black Americans who have beat the game and achieved the American Dream.
Samuel L. Jackson’s role embodies the passivity of Black people (particularly those of the middle and upper class) in a subjugated role. If you listen to Jackson’s words he quickly becomes less like Uncle Sam and a lot like Uncle Tom. Midway through Lamar’s performance, Lamar stops the performance to critique it for being “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto”. He asks Lamar ‘Do you really know how to play the game?” because Lamar needs to “tighten up”. Black Americans are expected to adhere to respectability politics, where their success is contingent upon white approval. The expectation to be “less loud, less reckless, less ghetto” stems from a desire to succeed in a white system. Those who refuse to conform—those who embrace what is correlated to Blackness unapologetically—are deemed undeserving of respect and subjected to racist systems that keep them marginalized.
Kendrick’s performance directly confronts this double standard, rejecting the notion that Black success must come at the cost of authenticity. Kendrick performs his music just as loud and unapologetically as he did before. It’s what he has always done and what has brought him his success.
Not Like Us: America’s Diss Track
Lamar’s song “Not Like Us” was the highly-anticipated and long-awaited song of the Halftime performance. It was also a pivotal moment in Hip Hop history. The Grammy-winning song challenges the idea that diss tracks are inherently “ghetto” and one-dimensional pieces of music. Diss tracks are deeply rooted in Black and urban culture. They boast lyrical artistry and cultural resistance. By performing Not Like Us on the Super Bowl stage, Kendrick transformed the diss track into a broader critique of systemic oppression, using the genre’s defiant nature to challenge America itself.
Lamar’s direct eye contact with the camera, and what we later learned with Donald Trump is an unmistakable act of defiance. The performance of the song dramatized the longstanding tension between Black America and White America. Kendrick reclaimed the diss track as a legitimate and celebrated form of protest and Black identity, reinforcing Hip Hop’s role in giving voice to the marginalized. Kendrick Lamar firmly communicates that he will not conform.
Game Over
Lamar finishes his performance with a simple yet mighty demand, “turn the TV off”. The statement is a reminder and a call to action. Black individuals and other marginalized communities do not have to participate in America’s rigged game. They have agency. They can redefine success on their own terms. Kendrick Lamar says its time to stop playing a game designed so that you never win. For Black Americans, it’s time to turn the tv off, it’s game over.
Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance was a masterclass in resistance, a reminder that even in white-dominated spaces, Black artistry has the power to disrupt, challenge, and demand change. It was a message to Black Americans to never conform. Power and change start from within. It was also a reminder that Black Americans with power in white spaces have the responsibility to resist and protest.
Kendrick’s performance begs us to ask, “If those of us in the highest positions don’t demand change, who will?”