The Super Bowl Halftime Show has been a tradition since 1967, and the first one ever featured a jetpack display and a high school marching band, according to Deadline. This show is a source of entertainment during this championship football game. This year, rapper Kendrick Lamar was the special guest, which ultimately causes a lot of mixed feelings between viewers.
First of all, a common argument before the show even started was that no one knows who Kendrick Lamar is. In my opinion, that may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Granted, it is mostly old people on Facebook, so I guess they don’t know who he is. In 2018, Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for music because his album was a piece of “groundbreaking work that captured the complexity of modern African American life.” He is a well-respected artist in the community and won five Grammys THIS year. Even if you aren’t a rap music fan, one of the biggest songs these last few months was “Not like Us.” Asking the question, “The NFL couldn’t get someone famous?” makes you look dumb.
Now, my opinion about the show itself: It wasn’t my favorite show, but it wasn’t as bad as some say. During a press conference on February 6 held by Apple Music, Lamar promised to bring “storytelling” in his performance. Kendrick’s style is notoriously calm and focuses on the deeper meaning, but for the Super Bowl halftime, I love a crazy show with unexpected guests popping up everywhere the camera turns. That being said, this performance had more meaning than just a fun time.
Although many aspects are open to interpretation, his overall message was an attempt to show the racial divide in society. Samuel L. Jackson, (acting as the narrator) introduced Lamar by saying, “It’s your Uncle…Sam, and this is the great American game.” He then went on to say that Lamar’s performance was “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” This was widely interpreted as a commentary on the ways Black voices are often policed in mainstream spaces.
Another point in the show that represents a racial movement is the dance (crip-walking) that tennis player Serena Williams was doing throughout “Not like Us” (which is a song dedicated to his public feud with Canadian musician Drake). This tennis star sparked controversy in 2012 when she did the same dance during the London Olympics tennis matches in Wimbledon after her defeat of Maria Sharapova. At the time, many critics became outraged because they felt the dance “glorified gang violence,” while fans defending Williams felt the backlash was racially motivated. This was not the only message surrounding Williams. Having her on stage offered up many more deeper meanings, such as the fact that both her and Lamar are from Compton, California, and she is an ex-girlfriend of Drake’s.
Overall, I didn’t mind the halftime show, and despite the general consensus that it was bad, this was the most viewed halftime show ever according to Billboard, with 133.5 million viewers in the United States; this surpassed Michael Jackson’s performance by 100,000.