It is often thought that the NFL’s Super Bowl Halftime show is supposed to bring people together through music, yet some would also agree that several Halftime shows in the past have brought on enough controversy to potentially lose some viewership. Once thought as a family-centered event, the past few shows have especially inclined some parents to change the channel. Despite any statements the NFL makes about what their company is or represents, it is not intended to be a family channel but rather a sports entertainment network, pulling in viewers from around the world with the appeal for entertainment through football.
With that in mind, the Super Bowl Halftime show has never been about bringing others together in a communal sense but rather bringing viewers together. In the 1993 Super Bowl Halftime show, Michael Jackson’s performance brought the number of viewers to 133.4 million, a record which remained unbroken until 2025. Since then, the NFL has strived to find performers who would increase the viewings for the game and maintain their attention.
Super Bowl LIX’s halftime show featured multi-award-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose popularity skyrocketed during last year after his song “Not Like Us” went viral. Leading up to the show, people debated just how much the NFL’s preview team would censor his global hit during the performance. After elaborate teasing throughout the show, Lamar finally played the song and though it was heavily censored, the infamous “A minor” line remained untouched, much to the joy of many in the stadium and watching at home.
At first, I questioned the NFL’s choice for the Halftime show performing artist, not to say Lamar isn’t a quality performer. He is well-known and well-respected, and has acquired well-deserved global success. Right now, Lamar is in the top five on Spotify and is the only music artist outside of the classical or jazz genres to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music. He is also one of the highest Grammy-winning rappers in history. As a matter of fact, many consider him the greatest rapper of all time. As far as qualification goes for who should perform at one of the biggest stages in America, there are few artists today who could meet the same recognition.
However, despite being one of the top artists on the planet, his very, very popular (yeah, that song) is also quite controversial: it is a diss track on the world-famous Canadian rapper Drake, who was named number eight on Billboard’s list of the “50 Greatest Rappers of All Time.” Lamar’s song “Not Like Us” being a shot at Drake happened to be one of the few things I knew about Lamar before the Super Bowl, so as I watched the first half of the game come to an end, I was a little tense—perhaps as much as the Chiefs fans—as I watched the show begin with my family. Would the NFL allow Lamar to defame Drake, uncensored? Shockingly, the NFL let Lamar throw his punches with little restraint. He wore his glittering silver necklace with the lowercase letter “a” as he and thousands upon thousands of others in the stadium shouted the lines, “Say, Drake, I hear you like ‘em young” and “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor,” which Genius.com argues could add to the allegations against Drake for grooming underage girls.
To be honest, I did not know much about Lamar before the Halftime show. I could only recognize the one song, and from the few lines I heard, it sounded like just another—if not brilliant—diss track. After much research and a handful of conversations with others, I realize that not all of Lamar’s music is about dissing other rappers, but the fact remained that Lamar performed “Not Like Us” at the show, and he was praised for it. The NFL didn’t seem to care much about what that could have meant for Drake before they agreed to have Lamar do the show. Everyone in the nation was in on the diss of Drake, and as far as the NFL was concerned, that was entertainment they could use.
I can’t really argue that a quicker wit with cleverer insults is hilarious material. With talk show hosts cornering celebrities about past flukes to high-grossing films featuring shock-effect quips from characters, we’re all ironically drawn to division and discourse. We like watching someone have the last word in a fight. We laugh when our leaders banter (The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Presidential Debate YouTube videos between Biden, Trump and the following debate with Harris have a total combined viewing of 37 million views), and as long as it’s not directed at us, we can’t get enough of disrespect on a stage. Discourse entertainment has been embedded in our culture long enough to be naturally entertaining to us, but my hope is that this is not prescriptive but descriptive. Enjoying a rapper disrespecting another rapper in front of millions of people is what we enjoy now, but it’s not something we have to continue encouraging or striving for. We risk too much by leaving this unchecked. If we go on disrespecting each other, devaluing those we deem lesser than us, we’ll all be left laughing mockingly at each other from our sides of the line, chanting, “They not like us!”—excusing it all as harmless entertainment.
Photo courtesy of Dorel Gnatiuc on Unsplash
