I watched the Super Bowl halftime featuring Kendrick Lamar.

February 12, 2025. Day .

So, I didn't watch the ball game. I turned it on in the middle of the first quarter but there was an ad on about Chevron drilling in the "Gulf of America" and I was too disgusted to leave the TV on, so I watched the halftime today.

I thought it was OK as those kind of shows go--but I don't usually like shows where the musical performer has a bunch of dancers with them on stage. I understand that's kind of expected now but I can't get too excited about it. I was pleased that the dancers were serious, and not just a bunch of children as is sometimes done. The choreography did, at times, remind me of Oompa-Loompas and the dances they do before they impart another valuable lesson too late.

I kept hearing that the show was intended to offend Donald in some way but I didn't catch it (and neither did he; he left before halftime). Having (Chattanooga-raised) Samuel L. Jackson make comments as Uncle Sam about what the American people supposedly wanted/would accept was a fun idea (and I'm told that idea was borrowed from his role in Spike Lee's Chi-Raq), but I didn't see what was transgressive/unacceptable about the show other than it wasn't rock or country. I realized I had heard a whole Kendrick Lamar album back in 2016, nine years ago, so he's not a brand new voice--he's one of the most popular musicians in the country/the world. I would have liked it if he had really made Trump/Trump fans/rich people with SB tickets uncomfortable but I don't think he did, unless it was so subtle I missed it.

I heard he had issues with the Canadian hiphop guy Drake, who is just a celebrity figure of fun, it seems. The big question going into halftime was whether KL would repeat a lyric about Drake being a "certified pedophile", aaaaand: he did not. (He did the song, but the word 'pedophile' was omitted, replaced by a yell, like: "certified AAAH"!) Which leads me to ask: if you already had a hit with this song calling Drake a pedophile, and everybody who cares already knows the song, haven't you pretty much already made Drake irrelevant? Is there a point to reviving the beef for the Super Bowl audience, picking poor beat-up Drake up off the canvas, as it were, and then NOT saying the word? It seems like, if the NFL was trying to get across the message that Drake is a pedophile, they'd have asked KL to say the word more clearly. Or: are we supposed to believe that the message of the SB halftime is somehow separate from the NFL, or that they don't know who they hired? Or exactly what he was gonna say? (I think it was pre-recorded.) Anyway, the NFL wants us to know that Drake's a pedophile, but they also want to pretend they didn't say that.

Anyway, I saw all the red, white and blue clothes and I hoped we might get a coherent statement about America (one I, a mere dabbler in political things, could understand anyway). (Let me be clear, I would only accept a statement that America is bad. Anything else, in this political climate, would automatically be incoherent.) I'm not sure what else I got.

I liked this: a brief dance sequence that mimics TV static or glitches in an analog way. Caution: it's not flashing lights, but it looks like flashing lights. (Click the link to play the video, and wait about three seconds.)

screengrab of Kendrick Lamar's super bowl show