Karen Attiah

Kendrick Lamar’s performance was as Black and subversive as all get-out

His message at the Super Bowl was a warning and a threat.

February 10, 2025 at 5:19 p.m. ESTToday at 5:19 p.m. EST

4 min

Kendrick Lamar performs during halftime at Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans on Sunday. (Frank Franklin II/AP)

“The revolution’s about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy.”

These were the words of Kendrick Lamar during his epic performance during the Super Bowl halftime show. And perhaps it’s fitting that during the country’s most-watched sports event, he artistically reminded us all that the place of Black people in America has always been under threat. And now, with an unmistakably white-supremacist administration at the helm, this is the right time.

But Lamar is not the one to deliver the revolution. He’s right about that.

On the artistic front, Lamar’s entire performance was as Black and subversive as all get-out. From the choreography to the fashion to the choice of Samuel L. Jackson as “Uncle Sam” to the decision to play that song, “Not Like Us,” everything about the performance evoked memorable cultural moments.

The overt reference to the Korean hit show “Squid Game” — the circle, X, square and triangle setups — was a reminder that the game of survival in America is deadly. A fitting context in New Orleans’s Caesars Superdome, where our modern gladiators — football players — bash each other to grab territory from the other team.

To me, the most striking feature of the performance was the Black dancers, clad in red, white and blue, but wearing various versions of Black-coded dress — hoodies, du-rags, grills, long white tees and denim. At one point, the female dancers performed a sorority-like stroll — an instant ode not only to Black culture but to the Black woman, Kamala Harris, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha — who could have been president.

Jackson as Uncle Sam was brilliant. Back in 2012, he played the role of a house slave, Stephen, in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” who protects his master at all costs and tries to thwart the uprisings against the White masters led by the character Django. During the Super Bowl performance, his Uncle Sam chides Lamar for being too Black, “too ghetto,” and asks him to tone things down — trying to dictate the boundaries for Blackness in White spaces.

He tells Lamar to not play that song that buried Drake — and by extension, everyone who traffics in Black culture for profit. And wearing a lowercase “a” necklace — a reference to his accusation, hotly denied, that Drake had relationships with underage people (“struck a chord / but it’s probably a minor”) — absolutely diabolical. After Drake dissed retired tennis superstar Serena Williams, Lamar had her onstage, crip-walking — a shot back at Drake and, honestly, at the whole country for disrespecting Black women at the tops of their games.

The moment when the dancers formed a U.S. flag formation was one of the most powerful points of the night. With Lamar in the middle, they stood up and raised their fists — reminiscent of when Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists in a Black Power salute during the 1968 Olympics.

The timing of this callback in my mind was powerful — considering President Donald Trump’s outright assault on DEI policies. The fists in the air were a reminder that the fights of the 1960s are back in a big way — that civil rights progress should never be taken for granted in America.

In a post-Colin Kaepernick era, what should we demand or expect from Black performers at the Super Bowl? What does it mean to perform for the same league that reprimanded Black players who protested against police brutality? To perform before the president who is right now dismantling programs meant to help Black people?

Lamar has not yet said anything or made music to challenge the new power structure in Washington. Without artists and sportsmen who are willing to put it all on the line, the revolution will absolutely not come from today’s Black celebrities. And we should stop pretending it will. The revolution will come from us.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5678964&forum_id=2#48645693)

*wipes sweat off brow*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5678964&forum_id=2#48646080)

https://images.app.goo.gl/vZK27vqz3nchRTem9

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5678964&forum_id=2#48645810)