Song(s) of the Day #29: Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show

The best argument in years for the value of music criticism.

If you didn’t “get” Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show, that’s nothing to be ashamed of — there was a helluva lot to get. That’s what makes his work so satisfying, so consequential. If you didn’t “like” it, that’s another matter. But bear with me, and you might find you like it more. Unpacking it is half the fun.

The whole thing was artfully coded. Lamar spits complex rhymes studded with slang in a firehose flow of multi-tiered meaning. The production and choreography was easter-egged with signifiers, plain and abstract. You probably missed plenty on first viewing even if some of it registered — the Gil Scott-Heron paraphrase; the Busby Berkeley marching-band blocking of U.S. flag imagery, shapeshifting inside a space that alternately conjured a Playstation console and a prison yard; the Uncle Sam asides by the accomplished and fearless actor Samuel L. Jackson; the footnote-heavy Drake feud backstory revolving around the Grammy-sweeping diss track “Not Like Us.”

Below is a video of the full performance (the link is indeed live — ignore the “video unavailable” claim and click the “Watch on YouTube” link; you’ll just have to click back to continue reading here).

I certainly missed a lot on first viewing, and I’ve been a music critic for 30+ years, a hip-hop fan for longer, a Kendrick Lamar fan pretty much from the start. He’s been arguably the greatest living rapper for years now, an artist who makes music that’s inviting and thorny, funny and disturbing and densely virtuosic. It’s pop culture product with high culture artistry that’s not designed to be just “entertainment” (though it’s plenty entertaining) or catnip for art world fetishists (though his LP Damn. won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018).

So I did what I always do when a performance puzzles me. I did some reading.

My NYU colleague Dan Charnas wrote a powerful preview piece for the NY Times (it’s a gift link fyi). Lamar was in a difficult position as a performer, Charnas notes —which made his accomplishment even more impressive.

Afterwards, Clover Hope unspooled the performance in Pitchfork. “Maybe it’s all just a sick game where the most Kendrick could do was push the envelope as far as the NFL and the televised broadcast system would allow,” she offered. And maybe it was.

Amaya Lin made similar points on her Substack Record Store:

Special: Kendrick

Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield, grandmaster of the lede, began his review: “Kendrick Lamar struck a chord at the Super Bowl, and it was definitely a major.” (An inside joke, but a good one; bonus points for the follow-up re: Philly “Ether”-ing Kansas City.) Wired published a piece about the startling technical and logistical achievements on display in his performance. Sites from Newsweek to Dazed attempted to bulletpoint the show’s symbolism. Time broke down the backstory of Serena Williams’ Crip walk cameo. The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica zeroed in on the performance metanarratives. The social media threads, many quite good, keep coming.

More will be written in the coming days, weeks, and years, and I’ll try to keep up with it. Because good music criticism makes the experience of hearing music richer.

Here’s Kendrick’s Super Bowl setlist, followed by a rewind of some early touchstones, including two from his breakthrough To Pimp A Butterfly.

“Bodies” [GNX preview track]
“Squabble Up”
“Humble.”
“DNA.”
“Euphoria”
“Man at the Garden”
“Peekaboo”
“Luther” (feat. SZA)
“All the Stars” (feat. SZA)
“Not Like Us”
“TV Off”