During this year’s Super Bowl, rapper Kendrick Lamar took stage during halftime as an advertisement for jeans! He also rapped. During the live show, I felt very underwhelmed; I was unsure what was going on during the performance and what the bigger picture was. Like many others, I was just waiting for SZA to grace the football fans with her angelic voice, and of course she did. I also don’t know many of Kendrick’s songs (more of a supporter of the rap girlies), so I was mainly watching for visual appeal. After watching it, my sister started geeking about how symbolic it was; so, here is a brief rundown of the symbolism in Kendrick’s performance and what it all could mean!
The performance started off showing an overview of the stage, and it resembled a play station controller. As someone who mixes up video games, I was VERY confused as to why an X-Box controller was going to be important. However, it resembles ‘the game’, which is mentioned by Uncle Sam during the performance, also as lights in the crowd.
Samuel L. Jackson then takes stage dripped out in a very patriotic outfit and introduces himself as Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is a personification of the United States government, and throughout the performance Jackson criticizes Kendricks’s performance, saying it is “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” Jackson questions if Kendrick Lamar knows how to play ‘the game’ (which connects to the stage being a play station controller) and whether Lamar knows what the people want to see. After Lamar and SZA performed, Jackson said that their performance was what the people wanted to see because it was nice and calm. Jackson as Uncle Sam served as a ‘reminder’ to Lamar about what the Super Bowl show was all about, and what the audience is expecting from it.
For Lamar’s performance of “HUMBLE.,” the dancers, all being Black men, were positioned as an American flag; however, for most of the dance, the dancers were separated down the middle. There has been a lot of opinions about this artistic choice, but each the same motif being the importance of Black people in the history of the United States. Most statements regarding this that I’ve seen is that the United States was built on the country of colored people, but they are the first the government blames when something goes ill. This was a very bold move made by Lamar, but I feel like it added an additional layer to the performance.
Lamar’s performance was definitely a political statement, proven through the symbolisms listed above, as well as other statements he made throughout (“revolution is about to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy”; “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music”; “tried to rig the game but you can’t fake influence”).
To finish the performance, Lamar performed Grammy winning song “Not Like Us.” This song was published as a diss track against another rapper and has been relevant since it has been released. I expected this song to be performed, but seeing Serena Williams dancing (yes, THEE Serena Williams) caught me completely off guard. Overall, my main take away from his performance is the girls will eat every time, and you are unstoppable in a pair of cute jeans!
