“Too Loud. Too Reckless. Too Ghetto”: Black history in Lamar’s Superbowl half-time performance.
On February 9th 2025, Pulitzer Prize and 22-time Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar took the stage at the American Superbowl game, showing us exactly how art needs to be subversive in a world like ours today, re-emphasizing how existence itself is political, because as Althrusser rightly says “an individual is already always a subject”
Needless to say, his artistic, musical and lyrical genius, has created history and and the world has not been the same since.
While the much-awaited references to the on-going feud/lawsuit between the rapper and Drake took the internet by storm, Lamar was doing much more than just adding fuel to the fire. He wanted to talk about more with this carefully choreographed performance. From deep-rooted references in Black history, to the story-telling in the dance sequences, there is much more to the eye than the audience saw, and caught onto.
The performance begins with the legendary Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam. From the get go, the narrative begins with blackness induced in a well known all-white national personification of the United States. Uncle Sam, is not just a side-presence in the show. He is seen as a referee, passing judgements like “Deduct 1 life” and urging Lamar to tone it down. A nod to institutionalization, threats to censorship, and an omnipresent restraint alive in artists — that by virtue of self-imposition or external forces, suppresses their art. Not Kendrick Lamar though.
There is deliberateness and angst triggered with every visual metaphor, every choice of song, the sequence, and everything hereafter in the next 13 minutes that make this performance not just an interval but a cultural intervention on the biggest platform in America.
Lamar opens with the line “The revolution is about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” a direct reference to Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a black revolution song and poem that is brutally confrontational about the idea that the revolution was, and will never be made digestible or palatable for those who don’t want to digest it as is. Lamar has one message and it’s clear; artists that built Black History on their backs never inherited silence, and artists today never will.
Written in 1971, (and used with such strong foresight) the song still holds its relevance today, as we have seen the popular reactions, among the white audience, about Lamar’s performance was that it was too black.
The set is designed to depict a PlayStation controller, with visual symbolism, and messages like “Start here” “Game over” and “Warning, wrong way”. As “Humble” rumbles through the stadium, we see the visual metaphor peak as the all-black dancers create a still of the divided American flag, representing the state of the current state of the country.
Timing “Not like us” to be sung right after Uncle Sam declares his performance as “nice and calm” warning him not to “mess it up” is a very miniscule example of his genius. His ultimate act of rebellion — juxtaposed by Uncle Sam’s validation of the “tamed” and “mainstream” songs that came before — is preluded by the lines “It’s a cultural divide, imma get it on the flo’. 40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music” and he’s right, it is. This refers to the broken promise of 1865, when former slaves demanded economic Independence from white control.
“Black citizens’ hopes that the federal government would provide them with land had been raised by Gen. William T. Sherman’s Field Order №15 of January 1865, which set aside a large swath of land along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia for the exclusive settlement of Black families, and by the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of March, which authorized the bureau to rent or sell land in its possession to former slaves. But President Johnson in the summer of 1865 ordered land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners. The dream of “40 acres and a mule” was stillborn”
(Reconstruction of the US, Britannica)
True to his art as always, Lamar makes the final act “bigger than the music” by inviting Serena Williams to perform the Crip walk; an elaborate form of footwork that spells out C-R-I-P when performed. Many are aware of the massive backlash Williams elicited by doing the Crip walk at the 2012 Wimbledon, but the context does not end here. The Crip Walk is an iconic dance step credited to Henry Heard, a professional Harlem dancer from the 40’s, who lost his arm and leg in a car accident. It was later used by the Crips gang in the 70’s.
Last but not the least, let’s also not overlook the double entendre in the “A minor” that echoed through the stadium — if looked at closely, the context of the themes in the show echo also his lyrical genius. A minor is a relative minor to C major, a minor scale that has the same key signature as a major scale, only starts on a different note. When played on the piano, the keys that have no sharps or no flats at all; all played on white keys.
Kendrick Lamar’s performance was not just an act, it was a statement made for people to listen, especially the “wrong guy” in attendance for the first time ever. The rapper promised a surprise, delivered and how!
“Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto”? That’s exactly what it was meant to be! That’s exactly what art is meant to be.
This is neither the start, nor the end of his artistry. Subversiveness is an on-going narrative Kendrick Lamar brings to life through his work, his writing and compositions. He explores themes of racism in every strata of society, alluding to on-going issues, and the rich history of Black culture. Centuries of artistic revolution come alive through his work, as he brings new meaning to expression, and discourse in music.
Kendrick Lamar stands as an artist true to the movement that has been reshaping the African American identity since the Great Migration of 1910. He not only understands but fully embraces the weight of responsibility that comes with furthering a cause generations in the making — one that intertwines art, activism, and the relentless pursuit of truth. Through his music and message, he carries forward the legacy of those who came before him, redefining cultural consciousness and amplifying voices that refuse to be silenced.
Listen to Kendrick Lamar’s Pultizer Prize Winner: DAMN here.
