New Orleans: Kendrick Lamar commanded one of the world’s most high-profile stages Sunday as the Super Bowl’s halftime headliner, yet another feather in the cap of the rap laureate who has ascended to new heights of pop stardom.
Lamar performed a string of his classics while toying with his audience who had one major question: would he perform “Not Like Us,” the searing diss track that served as the knockout blow in his eyebrow-raising rap battle with Drake? In a word? Yes.
The wildly infectious hit released in May 2024 hears the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lamar — the first solo rap artist 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 pedophilia.
“I wanna perform their favorite song,” he said at one point during the 13-minute set — the Grammy-winning track’s ubiquitous, instantly recognizable 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.”
Drake accuses Universal Music Group of manipulating popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ diss track
Lamar dropped the profanity and the world “pedophile” 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.
Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud: the biggest beef in contemporary rap history, explained
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.
Kendrick Lamar brings viral diss track, ‘Not Like Us’, to Super Bowl stage
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