Panem et Circenses: Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show

Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show: Protest or pretext?

In the middle of the “the biggest game of the year,” Kendrick Lamar played on a different field. His halftime show left millions feeling confused to exhilarated to angry, with one question rising above the rest. Was Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show a form of protest?

Let’s analyze it.

The Stage:

The show opened with the stage resembling a giant X, square, triangle, and circle structures reminiscent of the buttons on a PlayStation controller. At the beginning, the various buttons lit up to game start-up music as Samuel L. Jackson — a member of the infamous Black Panther Party and usher at Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral — stood in the center of the makeshift stage and introduced the “great American game” while dressed as Uncle Sam. 

The video game set-up with a football backdrop both speak to overt gaming. However it becomes increasingly obvious that Lamar and Jackson meant an entirely different type of game: gamifying identity, and the risks that come with it. An obvious double entendre, though masterfully left up for some interpretation. 

The Performance:

Lamar opened with “Bodies” while sitting atop a car, though he was quickly followed by three dancers exiting the vehicle: one red, one white, and one blue. They preceded a flood of women in red, as Lamar rapped rapidly about the government’s usage of money.

Before kicking off the meat of the show, Lamar took a moment to address the crowd, parodying Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Scott-Heron tells readers that they will not “be able to plug in, turn on and cop out” when the revolution comes. Instead, Lamar is clear on his thoughts of revolution over half a century later: “The revolution ‘bout to be televised / You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.”

Female dancers clothed in red introduced “squabble up” before Lamar launched into the song. Dancers in white hyped him up, whilst flanked by more dancers in red. Uncle Sam appeared towards the end of the sequence, seemingly horrified as he cried out, “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” before telling him to “tighten up,” ostensibly to fit the idea of what Black people should be through the eyes of white people. 

Hardly a week or two prior to Super Bowl LIX, the U. S. Department of Education (alongside the rest of the government) began undergoing the process of eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, measures. The ongoing debate of what one’s identity can and should be, has been attacked by ongoing attacks on minority communities. To further solidify this conflict of what it means to be Black in the United States, Uncle Sam asked him whether he “really [knows] how to play the game.” The real question remains unspoken: does he know how he’s supposed to act as a Black man in America? Does he know what the rules are, and how he’s held to different standards and different stereotypes than white or non-Black people? Can he code-switch? Can he pretend to be someone other than himself? Does Kendrick Lamar know how to gameify his identity?

In response to this, Lamar situated himself dead center of a group of dancers in formation as the American flag as he began rapping his 2017 hit “HUMBLE.” He directly divided them as they danced, standing in between the halves of the U.S. flag. The dancers raised their fists before marching in a manner akin to the army. At the end of the segment, they immediately separate, scrambling to get away as a rhythm eerily similar to machine gun fire disrupted them. 

Lamar followed with short verses from “DNA.” and “euphoria” as he walked across the field ahead of his dancers. He stopped before a light pole populated by men dressed in white who served as choral backup to “man in the garden.” The rapper placed an emphasis on a line asking, “Flip a coin, you want the dangerous me or the famous me,” coyly insinuating that he’s playing the game. Uncle Sam, right on time, breaks through to insult him, venomously calling the dancers his “homeboys” and implying that their existence provides some sort of “cultural cheat code” for Lamar. He asks that the scorekeeper “deduct one life,” potentially referring to the quite literal rates of violence against Black men. 

The next song on the setlist was super-charged “peekaboo,” which reaffirms his existence as a Black man, despite the societal forces that surround him. At this point, he is inside the X that he performed within in the beginning of the show. He was surrounded on all sides by dancers in white while teasing playing 5-time Grammy-winning Drake diss “Not Like Us” before jokingly stating that “you know they love to sue.” The unclear “they” obviously refers to Drake but, on a greater scale, places Lamar at a greater difference from those “not like” him. 

He ultimately held off on playing the rap song of the summer, instead going for a softer atmosphere with “luther” in order to bring SZA out on stage. Dancers in red and white marched in prison or military lock-step around the circle and down the field as Lamar and SZA collaborated on “All the Stars.” Uncle Sam approved of this, separating this segment from its successor by stating that the softer, lilting singing and gentle rapping was “what America wants, nice, calm.” He appreciated how palatable Lamar and SZA were in the moment, though he never said outright whose palette they were serving. 

The Finale:

Finally, Lamar introduced “Not Like Us” by outright stating that, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music.” Although this can be read as a diss against Drake and his biracial identity, he was also speaking on the unresolved and unfulfilled promises made to African Americans during the Civil War era, implicitly likening them to the societal standards and stereotyping placed upon his community today. In another potential dig at the DEI repeals in the United States, Kendrick rapped, “They tried to rig the game / But you can’t fake influence.” 

His dancers fell into police outline shapes as he once again eviscerated Drake on live television, with the crowd being unmuted for the infamous “a minor” line. Lamar brought Serena Williams out to crip-walk, something she was shamed for doing at Wimbledon in 2012.

Finally, Kendrick Lamar brought his show full circle with “tv off,” bringing Mustard, the producer of the track, out as they called back to the opening reference to televised revolution. Lamar once again stressed his influence, changing a line of his song to say, “Super Bowl made a feat, you die, I bet it.” Finally, in a world where the revolution is likely to be televised, he tells viewers to “turn his TV off.” This can be seen as a call to participate, or as a call to revolt with the right guy. 

The show ended in darkness, save for lights that flashed a giant “GAME OVER” behind the field.

In the Apple Music broadcast, or the Fox/Tubi broadcast, or any of the plethora of straight ways people viewed the halftime show, broadcasters removed the dancer who, in an act of protest, raised flags in order to show solidarity with Palestine and Sudan. A protest did occur using the performance as a backdrop, legitimizing Lamar’s words. His small revolution was, ironically, not televised. This, including the general buzz surrounding the show, has led thousands of people to ask whether or not the halftime show was, ultimately, a form of protest. Ultimately, the fact that the show was and remains entirely up to interpretation mostly makes it a literary feat, something necessary in today’s political climate. 

Kendrick Lamar got people talking, and, in some way, that’s really what matters. The show was not a call to arms, but it was a call to listen, and certainly an earnest recommendation that we as Americans keep our eyes peeled.