A grinning Kendrick Lamar brings ‘Not Like Us’ to the Super Bowl halftime show

The smile — mirthful, mischievous, utterly without mercy — was when you knew: Kendrick Lamar was enjoying this.

As the headlining act of the halftime show at Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX, the 37-year-old Compton-born rapper spent the first 10 of his 13 minutes on the field of New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome pretending that he wasn’t going to perform “Not Like Us,” the knockout blow from his beef with Drake last year that brought this most proudly cerebral of hip-hop stars to new heights of pop renown.

He played other songs — songs about love and family and a yearning for authenticity — before “Not Like Us.” He enlisted the actor Samuel L. Jackson as a red-white-and-blue-clad Uncle Sam figure warning him against being “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” He admitted, “I wanna perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” which was reasonable enough: Although “Not Like Us” topped Billboard’s Hot 100 and last week won Grammy Awards for record and song of the year — a first for a diss track in which the disser describes the dissee as a pedophile — it also spawned an unprecedented federal lawsuit in which Drake accuses both his and Lamar’s record label of defamation.

As a result, perhaps, Lamar — the first rapper to headline music’s biggest stage as a solo act — looked a little pinched for much of his performance, as though he were weighing the pros and cons of going in on one of the most commercially successful artists of the last two decades.

Kendrick Lamar performs.

(Christopher Polk / Penske Media via Getty Images)

But then, with the festive horns of “Not Like Us” finally blaring through the stadium’s speakers, he looked into the camera — leered at it, really — and grinned a mile wide as he unloaded his heinous accusation: “Say, Drake — I hear you like ’em young / You better not ever go to cell block one.”

Later, Lamar dropped what might be the song’s most legally actionable line, letting the crowd fill in for him to call Drake and his homies “certified pedophiles.” But by then the damage was done: Surrounded by dancers — including a Crip-walking Serena Williams (!) — and cheered on by tens of thousands in the Superdome, Lamar had turned one of the most virulent diss tracks in rap history into the stuff of outright celebration at America’s preeminent cultural happening.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA perform.

(Cooper Neill / Getty Images)

The rest of Lamar’s halftime performance showed off the dexterous rhymes for which he’s been known since the early 2010s. Dressed in flared jeans, leather jacket and a backwards ball cap, he started the show crouched on a Buick Grand National, the car after which he titled his latest album, “GNX.” He strung together bits of “Squabble Up,” “Humble,” “DNA” and “Euphoria” and did “Man at the Garden” as part of a street-corner milieu under a prop lamppost; he brought out the R&B star SZA for a flirtatious run through their song “Luther” and a triumphant take on their Oscar-nominated “All the Stars,” both of which will no doubt feature prominently in the stadium tour they’re set to embark on later this year.

The show ended with the boisterous “TV Off,” a kind of “Not Like Us” sequel from “GNX,” for which Lamar was joined by Mustard, the L.A. producer with whom he made both songs (and who was wearing jeans even baggier than Lamar’s). When the song finished, lights in the crowd read “GAME OVER.”

Mustard, left, and Kendrick Lamar perform.

(Cindy Ord / Getty Images)

Sunday’s halftime show wasn’t Lamar’s first appearance at the Super Bowl. In 2022 the rapper was part of the all-star hip-hop extravaganza that Dr. Dre brought to Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium and which also featured Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary J. Blige. Both performances were produced as part of a long-term deal between the NFL and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation company — a partnership that raised eyebrows when it was announced in 2019 given Jay-Z’s earlier criticism of the way the league treated former San Francisco 49ers quarter Colin Kaepernick after Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police violence toward Black people.

“I said no the Super Bowl / You need me, I don’t need you,” Jay-Z famously rapped in 2018 after declining an invitation to play the halftime show.

Yet Roc Nation’s handling of the NFL’s high-profile musical offerings has been widely praised for both the shows’ production value and for the diversity that Roc Nation has brought to the talent showcased at halftime (which for years was dominated by legacy rock acts such as Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones). Lamar’s show was the sixth in a row to be headlined by an artist of color, after Usher in 2024, Rihanna in 2023, Dr. Dre in 2022, the Weeknd in 2021 and the duo of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020.

Before kickoff Sunday, Jon Batiste sang a jazzy rendition of the national anthem for which he accompanied himself on piano, and the duo of Trombone Shorty and Lauren Daigle performed a cheerful “America the Beautiful.” Lady Gaga also appeared in a pre-recorded segment that had her playing her song “Hold My Hand” on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street — the site of a terrorist attack on New Year’s Day that killed 14 people — while surrounded by police officers, firefighters, soldiers and other first responders.