Web Stories Tuesday, February 11

The wildly infectious hit released in May 2024 hears the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lamar the first solo rap artiste to helm a halftime show at the Super Bowl, which this year saw the Philadelphia Eagles pummel the Kansas City Chiefs use his punchlines to accuse Drake of paedophilia.

“I wanna perform their favourite song,” he said at one point during the 13-minute set the Grammy-winning track’s ubiquitous, instantly recognisable bass line resounding “but you know they love to sue”.

He offered his classics like Humble and DNA as well as tracks from his most recent album GNX he began the set atop the Buick Grand National it’s named for  including Squabble Up before sending fans into a frenzy in delivering the goods, a knife-twisting rendition of Not Like Us.

Lamar dropped the profanity and the world “paedophile” but didn’t stop short of the money line, rapping “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minoooooor” on live television in front of tens of thousands of spectators and an estimated 100 million viewers.

In delivering the lyric “say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young”, Lamar stared right into the camera, dancing on the Canadian rapper’s rap-battle grave while sporting a chain with a massive pendant a lower-case a.

The performance is all but sure to kick off more legal wrangling: Drake, the reigning highest-grossing rapper, recently filed a bombshell defamation suit against his own record label Universal Music Group, which also represents Lamar.

Drake is notably suing UMG and not Lamar himself, but questions abounded leading into the Super Bowl set over whether performing the song on one of the top global stages could open the door to further litigation.

UNCLE SAM, SURPRISE PROTESTOR

Not Like Us dominated the set but it was also a performance that paid homage to the 37-year-old rapper’s expansive oeuvre.

Born in Compton, California, the artistE is renowned as one of contemporary music’s most impactful writers, with his verses offering personal insights that take on systemic issues such as race relations and structural poverty.

His poignant lyricism soundtracked the Black Lives Matter movement and compelled many to call him the voice of a generation.

Lamar brought some of that energy to the Super Bowl stage, which included set narrator, the actor Samuel L Jackson, dressed as Uncle Sam, a character emblematic of American patriotism that has frequently appeared in military propaganda.

Lamar didn’t make any direct references to Donald Trump who several weeks into his second go at the presidency attended the game but rather used the platform to offer a more symbolic critique of the marginalised treatment of both hip hop and black Americans at large.

“No, no, no, no, noooo. Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto. Mr Lamar, do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up,” Jackson quipped at one point.

Troupes of dancers dressed in red, white and blue at one point coalesced into an American flag formation.

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