I spent this year’s Super Bowl Sunday as I traditionally do — on an overstuffed couch surrounded by friends and snack bowls. As CU students and longtime Kendrick Lamar fans, my friends and I counted down the minutes until halftime. We placed bets on what song he would open with. We all eagerly leaned into the TV when the Apple Music promo announced the show’s beginning.
But when Lamar left the stage, we could not help but feel disappointed.
Being familiar with Lamar’s musical thematic catalog, I expected politics to be sprinkled into his performance but where was Money Trees? Where were the flashy dancers and flame guns and fireworks? The Super Bowl is a spectacle, and it felt Lamar failed to bring the theater.
It took me days to realize the lack of entertainment was the point of Lamar’s performance. Through a multitude of Tik Tok commentary videos and journalistic analyses, I slowly deciphered the Easter eggs symbolizing the “game” Black Americans must play to survive a country barricaded by systemic racism.
The show opens with a birds-eye view of the stage. Xs, Os, and triangles line the field to simulate a PlayStation controller. The camera pans to Samuel L. Jackson, who introduces himself to the audience as Uncle Sam, and welcomes them to “the great American game.” Lamar begins freestyling on top of a GNX, the car that inspired the name of his latest album. He warns the audience, “the revolution ‘bout to be televised. You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.”
Within the first two minutes, Lamar disrupts the traditional Super Bowl halftime show formula. Most artists choose to open their performances with a big hit to hook audiences. By opening with an unreleased track, he signals to the audience they are not going to get what they expect.
Samuel L. Jackson’s character confirms this. He consistently pops up during the performance to urge Lamar to put on a show. When Lamar plays “squabble up,” an implicit invitation for America to fight him and Black Americans, Jackson calls the song “too ghetto” and asks Lamar if he really knows how to play the game.
To answer Uncle Sam’s question, Lamar plays Humble and brings out long-time collaborator, SZA, to tone the performance down with a series of slower songs. He plays America’s game. This does not last long. He breaks the peace by saying, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music. They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.” The reference to the unfulfilled promise the Union made to freed slaves during the Civil War insinuates the generational anger lying beneath Lamar’s performance and establishes himself as a symbol of intolerance. He knows his status as one of the world’s biggest rappers allows him to confront and resist white supremacy on a magnified scale.
After singing his infamous diss track, Not Like Us, he concludes the show with TV Off. He subliminally instructs the audience to physically turn off their TVs and pay attention to the injustices occurring around them during the most-watched football game in America.
The field then fades to black and the words “Game Over” glow from the stands, which indicates the ending of the performance and the game America forces Black Americans to play. It is a threatening call to change.
So no, there were no acrobatics or dancing sharks. Lamar kept his performance stripped as an act of defiance. He refused to give the American public their bread and circuses on its empire’s biggest stage.
Why didn’t Lamar make things a bit more obvious, though?
During class discussions and casual conversations on this majority white campus, my peers noted their confusion. A classmate said he thought Lamar would’ve had more success if he’d gone with an uplifting message of unity. Many hyper-focused on its relation to Lamar’s inflamed feud with Drake. Some wrote the performance off entirely, saying they simply did not enjoy it or felt compelled to read further into it. It seemed Lamar’s symbolism flew over its target audience’s heads.
This ignorance aligns with CU Boulder’s history. In 2019, Lauren Jade Arnold published an op-ed in The Denver Post addressing a viral video of a white woman yelling racial slurs at a Black student. She asks her fellow Buffs to listen to people of color on campus whose campus experience is “fraught with anxiety, ostracization, and discrimination.”
Much has changed at CU since 2019. When the column was published, Black students only made up 1.77% of the student population. Since Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders began leading CU’s football team in 2023, the number of Black applicants jumped 50%. CU is becoming increasingly diverse. Its white students need to be cognizant of their racial biases now more than ever.
Knowing this, my classmates’ dismissal of Lamar’s performance frustrates me. Diluting his political statement to a “mid” concert and voluntarily neglecting its cultural importance is dangerous. It has the capacity to create uneducated (and unsafe) environments for students of color at CU, which is an insult to the institution and campus culture. We must listen to Lamar to and take the initiative needed to ensure the unapologetic Blackness Coach Prime brings to CU is embraced, not ejected.