Online Reporter
NEW ORLEANS. — Ahead of Kendrick Lamar’s headline performance at the Super Bowl half-time show here in the early hours of this morning, the rapper’s journey from the unforgiving streets of Compton to pop culture ubiquity has been under the spotlight.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning artist is that rare artist capable of making you see through the eyes of a troubled soul searching for salvation.
Last weekend, Not Like Us won the 2025 Grammy for Song of the Year.
Drake has taken legal action against record label Universal Music over the track.
To understand what Lamar’s Super Bowl performance was going to be like, one must go back to the artist’s humble origins.
Raised on 1612 West 137th Street in Compton, Los Angeles, Lamar was surrounded by a community filled with members of rival gangs the Bloods and the Crips, that always felt on the verge of chaos.
One of his earliest memories was of the 1992 Watts riots, which were triggered by anger around the filmed beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers and the fact a trial ultimately failed to result in any tangible convictions. More than 50 people lost their lives because of this uprising.
This rebellious spirit seeped directly into Lamar’s raps, with the artist getting sharper and sharper with each new mixtape and album release.
If there’s any message that could emanate from Kendrick’s Super Bowl performance in New Orleans, I think it could be about the wildfires in Los Angeles and the city’s resilience — Marcus J Moore
By hiring Lamar, then, the NFL were sure to make an enduring live statement, much as they did with Beyoncé’s Hurricane Katrina-referencing Super Bowl performance from 2016.
Kendrick represents something just as powerful: cultural gravity. His music isn’t always designed for casual singalongs but rather it’s built for reflection, resistance and resonance.
Seb Joseph, a marketing expert and editor at Digiday, believes the NFL’s decision to have Lamar as a half-time performer is supposed to reflect the changing values of their brand and business itself, which has endured accusations of racism in the past.
Lamar could help the NFL with its image problems, but the bigger question mark was always going to be around whether he was going perform the Drake diss track.
For many it’s a song that reflected a changing of the guard in mainstream rap supremacy and solidified Lamar at the very top of the competitive ladder.
The Super Bowl is a high-stakes, zero-margin-for-error stage where the scrutiny is relentless, the expectations sky-high.
If an artist miscalculates, whether it’s the energy, the production or the cultural moment they’re stepping into, the fallout can be brutal.
Kendrick Lamar risked a lot by even gracing that stage.
“The Super Bowl half-time show isn’t just a performance — it’s the single biggest branding opportunity in music. It’s a 12-minute global ad for an artist’s catalogue, cultural impact, and marketability, all broadcast to an audience of over 100 million people,” says Joseph.
“And here’s the kicker: performers don’t get paid! Instead, the exposure itself becomes the currency, often translating into massive streaming hikes, album sales and brand deals.
“Take Rihanna in 2023: her streams rose 640% after her performance, and Fenty Beauty reportedly pulled in more than $5 million in media impact value from that subtle but game-changing mid-show makeup touch up.” — BBC.
Mathew Masinge