Review: Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam, in a riveting Super Bowl halftime show
Drake got dissed in "Not Like Us," Jackson played Uncle Sam as President Trump looked on, and Serena Williams danced in a surprise cameo.
So many questions circled around Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show during the Eagles-Kansas City Chiefs game at the Super Bowl on Sunday night.
First of all: Would the Eagles be ahead?
And secondly, besides his special guest SZA, who would the Compton rapper, performing just a week after winning five Grammys, bring out on stage with him?
Would it be New Orleans local hero Lil Wayne? Taylor Swift? Grammy rap album winner Doechii? And would Lamar only attack his archenemy Drake, whom he slayed with his uncommonly successful diss track “Not Like Us”? Or would he also target Super Bowl LIX attendee President Donald Trump?
The answer to the first question: Yes, by the whopping margin of 24-0, that would only grow in the third quarter.
As for the rest: None of the above.
Rather than turning his 13 minutes in front of an audience of over 100 million into a showcase of his hip-hop colleagues, Lamar kept it simple, and tightly disciplined. And he did not address Trump directly.
The only unannounced guests were the actor Samuel L. Jackson, dressed in red, white, and blue, and personifying America as Uncle Sam. He acted as the master of ceremonies, advising the rapper to keep his performance from being too unruly and warning him not to let the show get too “ghetto” in front of a global TV audience.
Lamar’s producer Mustard joined him on stage for the closing of “TV Off.” Which was followed by an appearance of a dancing Serena Williams, who briefly dated Drake.
Lamar started off by making a show of flouting Jackson’s advice: “The revolution’s about to be televised,” he rapped. “You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.”
As dancers dressed in red, white, and blue came tumbling out of a Buick GNX, Lamar followed Jackson’s introduction with “Squabble Up,” the tightly coiled single from GNX, the 2024 album whose Grand National Tour will come to Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field on May 5.
» READ MORE: Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show set list: The songs he performed
The 10-song set that followed — with Lamar wearing a jacket inscribed with the word “Gloria,” the name of the last song on GNX — found the rapper being followed around stage by teams of dancers on two songs from his 2017’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. He otherwise focused on GNX, a brighter, more hard-hitting album fueled by “Not Like Us,” that has broadened Lamar’s already large audience to stadium-sized proportions.
Early in the set, he teased “Not Like Us,” with the sound of its simple, repeated synth figure, only to back away like he didn’t intend to perform it, as if it wasn’t worth revisiting the rap battle with Drake that he had so clearly won.
But after bringing on SZA for two swoony numbers, “Luther” and the particularly delicious “All The Stars” — he relented and gave the people what they wanted, going in hard on “Not Like Us,” a song that transcended its battle rap origins to become an all-purpose anthem in an us-against-them world. One significant edit, though: the last word of the song’s most vicious allegation, in which he calls his rival a “certified pedophile,” was omitted, replaced with the sound of an explosion.
All in all, a disciplined, impressive and commanding performance, short on bells and whistles, long on mastery of his craft. In other world, exactly what you would expect from Lamar.
“When people talk about rap,” he said, “the conversations I hear, they think it’s just rap and not an actual art form … I love to see it get recognition for straight raps.”
The halftime show followed pregame musical performances that put an emphasis of the big game’s Big Easy setting.
New Orleans native Ledisi sang a powerful version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the hymn known as the Black national anthem, written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900. She was joined by 125 members of the Great New Orleans High School Chorale Collective.
Jon Batiste — who’s from Kenner, La., just outside New Orleans, sang an understated, jazzy version of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” moving easily into his falsetto range. If you made a prop bet that the musician would sing while playing piano and he would hold the final note of the song for over 3.5 seconds, you would have won.
Lady Gaga performed her hit “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick while playing piano and backed by a live band on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, where 15 people were killed in the early morning of New Year’s Day when a driver drove a truck into a crowd.
New Orleans musicians were also featured in pregame entertainment, including Trombone Shorty and Lauren Daigle teaming up on “America the Beautiful.”
Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard also performed with New Orleans brass band the Soul Rebels, and then backed Harry Connick Jr. singing Professor Longhair’s “Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”