The Revolution Will Be Televised: Kendrick Lamar’s game-changing Super Bowl halftime show
Art / Olive Bartlett-Mowat
The stadium roars as Samuel L. Jackson, playing Uncle Sam, steps up under a single spotlight and welcomes us to “the great American game”. The attention darts onto Kendrick Lamar crouching on his iconic 1987 Buick GNX. Tumbling out of the car comes 25 dancers dressed in all-American red, white, and blue.
What starts out as a classic performance from Kendrick, quickly turns into a piece of critical performance art. As sports fans glugged down their beer, he was not going to let them forget their political position. Through blinding lights, Uncle Sam scolds Kendrick, “Too loud, too reckless”, but most importantly, “too ghetto”.
The structure of the entertainment industry has the same blueprint structure as America: exploit the labour of black people for profit and then shut them out when they revolt.
Initially, it feels like Kendrick is hitting two birds with one stone through the performance. He is officially winning the feud against rapper Drake, as well as protesting the American dream built on the backs of black people. But the more you learn, the quicker you realise they’re the same thing.
Both the entertainment industry and the American Government extracted value from black communities, whilst providing nothing in return by comparison. Kendrick wasn’t only sending a message to citizens, but to a specific audience member who assumed office just 21 days prior — Donald Trump.
I spoke to Kindekel, a Black Wellington musician with her own RadioActive FM show, about the politics of the performance. Kindekel tells me, “The Super Bowl is one of the most American and most commercial places to perform so this is an extremely accessible point of view for a lot of the world ... It's a really good platform for conscious music to come through.”
During the show, there were specific moments that cemented Kendrick’s message. One being his choice to play his 2017 hit ‘Humble’ whilst dancers formed an American flag. Outside of the performance, this song sounds like a monologue about being the best rapper. But with the red, white, and blue dancers, the message takes a new form.
Kindekel says, “A lot of Kendrick’s imagery and what he's saying in his music is about African people building America. The economy would be nothing without the labour of others. Be humble, reflect on that.”
Kendrick's critiques of Drake extends further than his misconduct with underage girls — it points out what he represents in the industry. Drake’s success lies within his willingness to be a part of the system. His market value and accessible upbeat rap makes his work a commodity to be profited off — not art. As Kendrick puts it in ‘Not Like Us’, “No, you not a colleague, you a fuckin’ coloniser”. Drake has spent his career playing Uncle Sam’s ‘great American game’, whilst Kendrick has spent his disrupting it.
Notably, Kendrick brought out Hip-Hop's sweetheart and Drake's ex-girlfriend, SZA, to perform ‘Luther’ and ‘All the Stars’. These duets were beautiful but decorative.
Kindekel decodes this, saying, “It's what America wants from their black musicians. They want the entertainment of rap culture and the love of soul and R&B music, but they don’t want to deal with the pain, anger, or politics of being a black person.”
As the duets end, Uncle Sam coming back to remind us why we’re here, “Yeah that's what I’m talking about. That's what America wants, nice and calm. You’re almost there, don’t mess this…” before being cut off by ‘Not Like Us’.
In this song, renowned tennis player (and another one of Drake's exes) Serena Williams makes a five second appearance, crip walking on the corner of the stage. The ‘crip walk’ originated in Compton, California in the 70s by the Crip gang. Back then, the move was associated with violence and murder. However, today it has been reclaimed by black performers like Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, and Ice Cube.
In 2012, Serena faced an onslaught of hate for crip walking at the Olympics. But 12 years later, Serena is taking back the narrative. She joked on socials after the SuperBowl, “Man, I did not crip walk like that at Wimbledon. Ooh, I would’ve been fined.”
Wanting to understand all elements of the performance, I also spoke to Isabella Oliver-Clyne, Black fashion designer of Razcal. She says Kendrick's outfit holds significance too, pointing to the decades of black influence on fashion. “The bell cut jeans are a nod to the 70s and then the jacket and chain nod to the 90s. The pairing of these decades is because of the surge of black culture around that time. He's a display of black pride.”
In the 70s, the sailors of the American Navy filled up second-hand stores with their old bell cut jeans. People resisting consumerism used these pre-owned bell bottoms to represent rebellion and counterculture. Disco, a genre created by black artists, shot into stardom in the 70s along with the bell cut jeans.
As for the leather jacket, the piece was significant for African American revolutionary group, The Black Panthers. They used the leather jacket to stray away from the traditional suit and tie of the civil rights movement. Its unpenetrated exterior acted as armour, metaphorically and literally.
Through his fashion, Kendrick portrays the duration of time that black communities have had to endure this oppression. And with Trump as president, there is no end in sight.
Isabella believes the patriotic colour palette is indicative of the resemblance between the Government and the primary gangs of the States: The Crips and The Bloods. “It comes with such irony that the American flag is made up of the same colours that are used for the gangs. It's almost like they don’t fall that far away from each other.” Placing exclusively African American dancers in these symbolic colours tells multiple stories of marginalised communities at the same time.
Through both conversations I had with Kindekel and Isabella, two prominent emotions surrounded us: A cold renunciation for the systems at play, and hope for the bubbling of change.
Martin Luther King Jr. explained it best in 1963, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never volunteered by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”.