The Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper chose art over spectacle, but still delivered the final blow to the enemies of the diss track.

The Super Bowl halftime show is Plato’s perfect form of pomp and ceremony, a corporate-sponsored, highly choreographed musical spectacle designed to get non-NFL watchers to watch TV—and secure higher advertising fees from Doritos and Dunkin’ Donuts. Over the years, the show has had its fair share of great moments: Prince playing Purple Rain in the rain, Rihanna announcing her pregnancy… but it has never been a place for serious art. The Super Bowl Halftime Show’s biggest controversies—Janet Jackson’s exposed boob, MIA’s middle finger—have been the childishness of adolescence.

Could that change when Kendrick Lamar, one of the great public intellectuals of the decade—a Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper who transformed the possibilities of hip-hop—takes the Super Bowl stage? It’s an unlikely NFL pairing in a normal year. But performing in front of a president who has been accused of attacking the communities Kendrick Lamar grew up in, it’s significant even before the show begins.

Images from Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the 2025 Super Bowl. (Photo: AP)

But Kendrick Lamar didn’t necessarily have to make a statement. He was at the most mischievous stage of his career and at the height of his mainstream fame: in 2024, Lamar released a series of diss tracks at war with Drake, culminating in “Not Like Us”—a song that spent the summer at the top of the Billboard 200 chart and repeatedly and explicitly called Drake a pedophile. It was a playfully defiant song, but it had a brash tone that didn’t fit the inclusivity of the Super Bowl. So which Kendrick would come to New Orleans? The prophet or the provocateur?

We ended up getting both, with an uneven but ambitious set that was arguably the most esoteric in Super Bowl history. It starts with Samuel L Jackson as Uncle Sam, playing the American machine who scolds Lemar: “This is your Uncle Sam, and this is the great American game!”.

(Photo: AP)

Kendrick Lamar kicked off the show in a 1987 Buick Grand National GNX, the rare car his album is named after. He performed an unreleased and untitled track known on the Kendrick Lamar subreddit as Bodies—an early sign that he wasn’t in New Orleans to please the crowd. His outfit also spoke to a sense of self-possession: he wore a varsity jacket by British designer Martine Rose and a pair of gorgeous flared pants—something straight out of mid-2000s American Eagle.

The show warmed up with “Squabble Up” and “Humble,” as dancers swarmed the stage in red, white, and blue tracksuits, a nod to the Americana of the event and potentially a moment of unity between two rival Compton gangs. As the all-African American dancers began to blend together to form the American flag.

Photo: AP)

As “Uncle Sam” Jackson yelled at Lamar that he was “too loud, too reckless, too bad,” Lamar cut to a sprawling set that resembled a Compton street corner—another dramatic backdrop reminiscent of Es Devlin’s Compton street corner where Lamar performed with Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Eminem at the Super Bowl two years ago.

At times, Kendrick Lamar’s performance felt more like a Lincoln Center set than a halftime show, with dense beats and the interplay between Jackson’s dance moves, spoken-word moments and Lamar’s album tracks not always coming together to create a clear focal point. Lamar may be able to pull off some of the most epic melodies in rap history, but the onslaught of complex verses doesn’t always work in this area, and sometimes you’d expect a rousing anthem like “Alright” or “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” during Lamar’s performance at the 2025 Super Bowl.

But things took a turn midway through the performance when he teased “Not Like Us” in a comedic interaction with four female dancers. As the opening bars of the song played over the PA, Kendrick joked, “I wanna play their favorite song, but you know they like to sue.” The remark was a reference to Drake’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against the pair’s shared record label, Universal Music. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, there were some rumors that the lawsuit would prevent Lamar from performing “Not Like Us” at America’s most anticipated sporting event.

And for a moment, it looked like it might. Instead of going straight into “Not Like Us,” Lamar performed “Luther” and “All the Stars”—two of his songs with SZA. Lamar’s soaring vocals gave the set a more layered vibe and a helpful balance. Jackson even admitted that these more melodic tunes would appease skeptical sports fans back home: “That’s what America wants—nice and calm,” he shouted.

Lamar and SZA’s impressive performance. (Photo: AP)

But then Kendrick slammed on the brakes and swerved in the opposite direction, finally launching into “Not Like Us” and the feeling was electrifying. He flashed a maniacal grin, looking straight into the camera as he said “Hey Drake,” before launching into his speech. Lamar downplayed some of the biggest blows — self-censoring the word “pedophile” by removing it from his performance at the 2025 Super Bowl, presumably at the request of both his lawyers and the censors — but still screamed the devastating lyrics: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor,” surrounded by large flags showing small children pointing to the letter A.

And, as a final blow, Drake’s ex-girlfriend Serena Williams was seen limping by a lamppost. The Chiefs may have been down 27 points in the first half, pundits say, but Drake was the biggest loser in North America at the time.

Kendrick Lamar himself has always considered himself more of a witness than an activist, or as he puts it in his song “Family Ties”: “I’ve been avoiding social niceties…” But, for his performance at the 2025 Super Bowl, it was a smart, classy choice for Lamar to choose art over meme-friendly moments.