Dear Gossips,

The big news coming out of NFL weekend 1 is that the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime performer has been announced: Kendrick Lamar.

For the last few years ago, Jay-Z has been overseeing the selection for the Halftime show. And this, by far, is his most political and potentially controversial choice. Because Kendrick is one of the most political artists of his generation. His music addresses racial inequality and injustice, police brutality, the systems of oppression entrenched in American identity and now he’s performing at the most high-profile American event, the Super Bowl, an institution in and of itself, that represents an organisation that has been heavily criticised for holding up the practices and principles that Kendrick has opposed. The fact that the NFL even co-signed Kendrick as the headliner…

If you go back to Jennifer Lopez’s documentary, Halftime, which was in part about her Super Bowl performance and the preparation leading up to it, and how the NFL tried to interfere with what she wanted to do with her set, at a time when Donald Trump was still the President of the United States, imagine what Kendrick will do with his stage, on such an enormous platform. And especially since Super Bowl LIX, to be played in New Orleans, is happening just three months after the election. What will the American political situation look like next February? Who will be the president? What impact will that have on Kendrick’s show?

Interestingly enough, these questions remind me of a piece I read a few months ago, written by Ja’han Jones, using political analogy to describe Kendrick triumph in cultural politics this year, specifically in relation to his feud with Drake.

“In this campaign, Lamar was always angling to win rap’s version of the Electoral College vote more than the popular vote, trying to appeal to respected artists and influencers who could give him their stamp of approval. And in the end, he may have won the popular vote, too, breaking Drake's single-day Spotify record.”

What went down between Kendrick and Drake, for many, was about more than just beefing artists. As Ja’han Jones writes:

“…the loaded meaning of this feud, which featured catchy but cutting lyrics […] played on political themes such as Blackness, regional pride, power, privilege, access and, most importantly, authenticity. This was not an argument over who was the better rapper. It was a battle to determine who better represented hip-hop culture.”

And of course what’s emerged as the theme song, and Kendrick’s crowning triumph, was “Not Like Us”, which reached and stayed at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of the biggest songs of the year. A song that he has taken to repeating over and over and over again in succession at his shows with huge crowds rapping along to every lyric. And, well, by now most of us know those lyrics, especially the way he draws out the “A-minorrrrrrrrrrrrrr”.

Which brings us back to the Drake of it all because if/when “Not Like Us” shows up on that setlist at the f-cking Super Bowl…

It’s basically dunking on someone in the most spectacular way possible.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Kendrick Lamar Gossip

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