February 9th, 2025 was the annual Super Bowl. After winning five Grammys for “not like us”, Kendrick Lamar performed in the Halftime Show with SZA. Almost everyone watches the Halftime Show, and Lamar took advantage of this world wide coverage.
On February 11th, his Halftime Show had 133.5 million viewers; a larger audience than the rest of the Super Bowl had.
Many viewers after watching the show went to social media to call this performance boring, but they may not see the symbolism. The big idea that I took away from his performance was the symbolism of how America may have become fully corrupt, especially due to President Donald Trump being back in office. There are many articles surfacing on the internet about what Lamar actually meant.
During the performance, Lamar says, This has stood out to numerous viewers as it’s assumed that he’s referencing President Trump when saying “wrong guy”.
A publication website called World Wide Socialist Web Site described Lamar as “wallowing in backwardness” in contrast to protesting President Trump. They go on to say that the liberal claims towards Lamar are “absurd” and that he wasn’t “criticizing the new administration”. Calling liberal assumptions “absurd” is a reach. Lamar has always talked about political/controversial topics through his music, whether that be Black oppression, sexual abuse, or gun violence. These can be seen in his most recognized albums: To Pimp A Butterfly, DAMN., and Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. According to Distractify, a news reporting website, Lamar has never forwardly supported a certain candidate over the years. However, he has expressed how important it is to vote, and his viewpoints tend to be more liberal.
Lamar does make an effort to call out President Trump, that’s not the main message he wants to get across; he is talking about all the people of America.
At the start of the show, Samuel L. Jackson announced Lamar onto the stage in his character as Uncle Sam. He goes on to add “and this is the great, American game”. After Lamar performs “squabble up”, Uncle Sam interrupts saying, “No, no, no! Too loud, too reckless, too… ghetto. Mr. Lamar? Do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up!”.
Jackson being black and playing Uncle Sam shows irony in what he says. Seeing a Black man call another Black man “ghetto” seems ironic to a lot of viewers, but it’s supposed to show that in America, you can be expressive as long as it’s “clean” and conforms to White people.
Uncle Sam represents more than what it seems. The propaganda character most recognized from WW1 to get people to join the war, was supposed to portray liberty, freedom, equality, and the American Dream. African American people were not included into that dream for a long time and are still fighting to this day.
At one point of the performance, Lamar says, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music. You know they tried to rig the game but you can’t fake influence”. 40 acres and a mule refers to the broken reparation promise given to enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. They were promised land and resources so that they could economically support themselves, but they were not given this and fought for equality for a century to follow.
Lamar has brought to light America’s history of slavery and racism that many don’t talk about anymore, because of how cruel it all was.
The message he’s trying to get out doesn’t stop at just his words. He wore a backwards hat, a custom Martine Rose jacket that said “Gloria”, bell bottom jeans, and chain necklaces (including one with a lowercase “a” on it). As what the “a” stood for has been in the air. Lamar hasn’t confirmed himself what it meant, but people have started guessing. Many thought it might stand for the lyric in “not like us” when he says “a minor” in reference to Drake’s many underage dating allegations. Others have thought it may be a sponsorship for Apple Music or connected to the creative company pgLang that Lamar co founded for.
The bell bottoms may represent something deeper as well. In the 60s and 70s, bell bottom jeans blew up in the fashion industry. The Hippie Movement, “a counterculture of people who actively opposed the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War”, gave the bell bottoms another meaning.
Especially for men, these jeans allowed them to express themselves freely in a way that wasn’t accepted before. For Black men, they became a statement. It showed that they had the right to dress freely and express themselves. The Post, an independent student-run newspaper, exclaims, “They often donned colorful and bright options that featured fun textures and challenged the concept of men’s fashion”. Alongside with the music of this time, such as the Jackson Five and Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes, revolutionized what it meant to be Black.
Lamar wearing bell bottoms jeans, while the U.S in a political time of fear and unknown of what will happen to many human rights and the country altogether is symbolic enough to understand what he fears and many others fear. Battles that humans have already fought, like racism, abortion rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, are being debated again causing panic. The U.S. government seems to care more about oil drilling and military efforts than basic human rights.
The performance starts with Lamar standing in the middle of backup dancers dressed in red, white, and blue forming the American flag. The red and blue have also been theorized as Crips and Blood gangs due to how the dancers behaved on stage. As the show goes on the entire stage seems to be set up like a game controller. Top down view in the corners, there’s shapes of a circle, triangle, square, and an “X”, like a playstation controller.
According to Forbes, this could be a way of reaching out to younger audiences to put what’s happening to a perspective that they would understand better. Multiple times throughout the performance, Lamar does refer to life as “the game”. He may be referring to it all as a game, because there seems to be a political construct of the right way of life, as if there’s not an endless amount of ways to live.
Some viewers thought that it was all one big slander towards Drake. In actuality,There was a sliver of a hit at Drake, but again that was not the focus of it.
The Super Bowl performance has been seen as a way to bring awareness of the fears of what America may become.
