Kendrick Lamar sent a message during his Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, transcending rap beefs and sports rivalries to deliver a thoughtful remark on the joy and terror of Black life in America.
Atop a Buick Grand National, Kendrick Lamar, the headliner for the Super Bowl halftime show, made a clear statement, “The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.”
Such a phrase is reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” in which Scott-Heron recites, “The revolution will not be televised…the revolution will be live.”
Lamar is not new to making political statements throughout his rap career, especially in particular his music video performance of “Alright” on his album, To Pimp a Butterfly, referencing Black bodies being brutalized and killed at the hands of police violence.
Opening the halftime show, Samuel L. Jackson can be seen dressed as Uncle Sam, a white male character who is depicted as a patriotic personification and representation of the U.S. government, proclaiming “It’s Uncle Sam and this is the great American game,” against the backdrop of a tic-tac-toe stage that looks similar to a Squid Game set to provide an illusion if the American game is not played according, consequences could be deadly.
Jackson narrates throughout the performance ridiculing and criticizing Lamar, which viewers and critics speculate are a comparison to the Uncle Tom caricature, a character in the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” written by a white abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 to portray the dehumanization of enslaved Africans prior to the American Civil War.
The book has been critiqued as a watered-down version of the true horrors of American enslavement and failed to explore the theme of resistance in the depiction of the “perfect victim,” which in this case is Uncle Tom, a Black enslaved man who is today seen as a racial slur to depict Black men as submissive, obedient, gentile, and appeasing to white people.
Following Lamar’s performance of “Squabble Up”, a track from his most recent album GNX, Jackson proceeded to say, “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto,” emphasizing the weight of stereotypes Black people often face for not adhering to eurocentric standards.
Leading into his performance of “Humble,” Jackson continued his snide remarks, “Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?” He demands Lamar to tighten up and the camera cuts to showing a formation of the American flag of Black male dancers dressed in red, white, and blue with Lamar causing a split down the middle. This formation with the song selection is likely a tribute to enslaved ancestors, and a call for America to reckon with its past in the plight of attacks on DEI policies and the erasure of Black history inaccurately portrayed as critical race theory.
During his performance of “Man at the Garden,” Lamar is seen with Black male performers on a light post turf dancing, which is part of the hyphy movement out of the Bay Area, as he paints a picture of vibing with his homies and a representation of young Black manhood. It feels nostalgic of Tupac Shakur’s poem “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” conveying resiliency and defeating the odds in the face of struggle.
After a duo performance with SZA of “All the Stars”, a popular track off the Lamar-led Black Panther soundtrack, Jackson is grinning from ear to ear: “Now, that’s what I’m talking about! That’s what America wants – nice and calm. You’re almost there. Don’t mess this…” The beginning of “Not Like Us”, the Drake diss track, starts and Jackson walks off frustrated.
Before he begins to rap his hit song, he states, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music,” giving a jab at the failed promise for reparations of freed enslaved Black people during the reconstruction era after the civil war. Calls for reparations of descendants of enslaved Black people, or descendants of Black family members and living Black people who were victims of racial terror, as is the case of the Tulsa Race Massacre, has been a polarized issue in recent years with a slew of cities conducting reparations reports.
The halftime show ends with the song “TV Off” where one of his male dancers, part of his 400-member ensemble, is seen unfurling a Sudan and Palestine flag on top of the Buick Grand National before running around the field and being tackled by security, which has widely been circulated online.
The man has been identified as Zül-Qarnain who runs Open Book Platform, a platform that unpacks the truth in the media. His act of protest, which many are hailing as heroic, comes at a time when President Trump announces a $7.41 billion weapons package to Israel and his intent to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt; and Sudan continues to face one of the largest humanitarian crises, displacement of 15 million, and over 650 days of war. The Caesars Superdome packed with Super Bowl fans is a contrasting setting forcing American viewers to not turn a blind eye to these atrocities.
As the lights on the stage go dark, the phrase “GAME OVER” is illuminated over the stadium audience.
