Whoever came up with this idea… chef’s kiss. It’s genius marketing on multiple levels. 

First of all, we’re heading into Super Bowl weekend, the most watched broadcast in North America every year and Kendrick Lamar is the halftime headliner. Kendrick is always viral, so between him and the Super Bowl the hype has been building and building. 

 

Then you add Timothée Chalamet, social media’s favourite son, to the equation and it’s next level. The surprise, no one saw it coming. And the immediate comedy. Vulture came up with my favourite headline: 

Vulture's Headline

“Aspiring Rapper Granted Opportunity to Interview Kendrick Lamar” is SO f-cking good, and not entirely wrong, LOLOLOL. 

 

 

Anyway, the interview was teased yesterday. Here’s my favourite tweet in response to the news: 

You could make a case that there is some synergy here, though. There’s a Reddit thread from six months ago that points out that “bob dylan's ‘ballad of a thin man’ and kendrick's ‘not like us’ sample the same song and that gives them a beautiful shared hater energy”.

 

Timmy, of course, is currently in his Timmy Bob era, and campaigning for an Oscar for his performance in A Complete Unknown which, according to prognosticators, has surged in momentum while Emilia Pérez tumbles. Right now Timmy’s in the frontrunner position for the Best Actor Oscar, pretty much neck and neck with Adrien Brody. 

 

Adrien, yesterday, like the majority of the Oscar caravan, was at the AFI Luncheon. The AFI Awards are a regular stop on the Oscar circuit and Timmy has TWO films on AFI’s list of the best pictures this year. But as we have established over the last couple of months, Timothée Chalamet has not been following the usual Oscar campaign itinerary or game plan. He’s doing his own thing, true to his own generation, and instead of popping up at AFI with his fellow contenders, he instead showed up online with Kendrick for a Super Bowl promo. 

 

This is why I have repeatedly said how much I’ve enjoyed his Oscar run this time. Because he’s not doing it the old people way. He’s doing it his way, and if he loses, at least he’ll have gone down knowing that he wasn’t adhering to a prescription that wasn’t written for his generation – which is why his generation continues to f-ck with him. 

As for Kendrick? In the war between Kendrick and Drake, one of the tropes that keeps coming up is that Kendrick is the real one. “Not Like Us” is built around the premise that K-Dot doesn’t sell out while Drake is the industry plant. And, look, it’s not like I haven’t had a good time watching Kendrick dunk on Drake repeatedly over the last 9 months, but can we not pretend that Kendrick is still grassroots? 

 

A halftime performer has to get in bed with the NFL and Apple Music and all that sponsorship. Playing halftime is the most corporate of performances. And doing an interview with Timmy Bob Chalamet is a clout exchange, plain and simple. Unless Timothée Chalamet has some Compton credentials that we’ve never known about until now. 

And the interview? 

It was three minutes and 30 seconds, exactly. This isn’t an interview, it’s a music video, hahahahahaha. 

@nfl

Kendrick Lamar and Timothée Chalamet’s exclusive interview ahead of AppleMusicHalftime. #SBLIX

♬ original sound - NFL

 Attached: Kendrick Lamar on stage at the Pregame and Apple Music Halftime Show and Press Conference on February 6, 2025. 

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