(via Time) By Andrew R. Chow
When the NFL announced Kendrick Lamar as the Super Bowl halftime show performer in September, both his critics and fans expressed doubt that he would be up for the job. To naysayers, Lamar was too verbose, too political, too obscure for pop music’s biggest stage, which has typically featured culturally safe icons belting universally beloved anthems to the stadium rafters. Some instead clamored for New Orleans’s own Lil Wayne, a living embodiment of the raucous creativity and bacchanalia of the city hosting Super Bowl LIX.
Conversely, Lamar’s fans worried that the narrow confines of the televised gig would require him to compromise his artistry; that even the act of him performing on such a corporate stage was a sign of him selling out or renouncing his activist, anti-establishment roots. There seemed to be no way that Lamar could both win over the masses yearning for spectacle and his diehards hoping for a thunderbolt of Pulitzer-level genius.
But Lamar’s superpower has long been his unique ability to navigate this exact tension between message and reach: to tell stories of American pain and oppression without coming off as preachy; to challenge audiences lyrically and musically while widening his listenership. And on Sunday, this balancing act was on full display. Lamar delivered a Super Bowl performance wholly unlike any other before it, in which the aim was not to summon nostalgia or comfort but to demand full attention and active listening from his audience.
What Lamar lacked in singalongs, he made up for in narrative, visual stagecraft, and sly political commentary—while also slamming the casket on his rap feud with Drake for good. “The revolution ‘bout to be televised,” he warned his audience at the top of the show. “You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.”
Read more: https://time.com/7214228/kendrick-lamar-super-bowl-halftime-show-analysis/
Every Moment Has A Song 