Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Kendrick said, “The revolution ‘bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” — with the wrong guy sitting in the audience.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Comments 5
thread
latest
popular
The subversive genius of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime performance:
It was really good. I was about to write "as good as Prince," but it was quite possibly better than Prince...
Also: Feeling a bit grumpy at the Monday morning quarterbacks at NYT, Vox, etc. complaining the set was too concerned with Drake and insufficiently "political." The whole "will he behave?" (spoiler alert: no) structure of the show was clearly about both Drake and the other, uh, elephant in the room. The whole thing was deeply, profoundly, political.
Pretty sure that “other elephant” was too busy stuffing Big Macs and KFC in his face to notice.
I did not enjoy it (at the time). I don't listen to much modern rap and so i had trouble catching the lyrics. Sounded like mumble-rap and the same song four times, then the slower song and Not Like Us, which i did actually recognized. But at the same time i realized there was something important going on. I felt a little old and white for missing it. And in retro now it was a brilliant and unapologetic performance. I think i need to watch it again from my new perspective. I'm sure i missed a lot.
Hello! In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation.
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!