The Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t just performance. It was a setlist sermon about Black survival, coded language, and the politics of being “Not Like Us.”
It’s Tight, But It’s Right
“I’m not here to tickle your emotions” was a phrase that often followed a difficult to digest sermon in my religious tradition. When it was evident that the congregation wrestled with its response to the preaching as given by their silence and body language, the preacher would declare that “it’s tight, but it’s right.” In short, we are being told that emotionalism will not save us. Not every sermon is preached to make us feel good for the week ahead.
Yeah Drake released 3 albums but I’d much rather talk about Kendrick Lamar’s half time performance again.
It’s a sermon that asks you to interrogate why 75.3% of the US population fixates on the language, behaviors, culture, and execration (curse/denouncement) of 13.7% of the populace. It speaks to the predictable response of supremacists.
It is a political statement about the permanence of Blackness in spite of and regardless to attempted erasure. It asks the world to see that American greatness requires the destruction of Black American identity because it remains the evidence of its historic and ongoing cruelty.
We Are the Flag
On a world stage, Lamar’s demonstrative sermon of Black bodies forming the American flag drives home that we are the foundation and the force of everything that is this nation. We are the only victims of a genocide that has been denied as such for centuries.
There’s a fascinating auditory moment that happens for me when I watch the playback of Kendrick Lamar’s NFL Halftime Performance.
In the opening performance of the unreleased song Deets, I always hear “Philippians 2” in the line that actually says “I can power lift with Olympians too.”
And I’m wondering what it means to interpret this moment through my mishearing of the lyric.
Philippians 2, a passage often about imitating Christ’s humility. Particularly in the context of this global stage for Kendrick in the midst of his beef on wax with Actor turned Rapper Drake. How much differently can I interpret this when Philippians 2:3 offers to us “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” And 2:4 goes on to say “Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.”
What does it offer that the height of this beef is the release of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” A track that’s less diss than dissertation on the evidence of a man who only concerns himself with his own interest at the expense of the best interests of others—who are the Black women left unprotected and the Black men whose culture is tried on to colonize its wealth.
Maybe I’m Not Mishearing Him At All
Maybe I’m not mishearing him at all, can’t forget that this is Kendrick we’re dealing with.
The entire performance is a reminder that Black folks have been surviving this country forever and we will be alright. I understand that because I grew up in a religious tradition of coded hymns. Hymns whose meanings only reveal themselves when I’ve been prepared to receive them through reading, study, and necessity.
Lamar’s setlist sermon in all of its surface and subliminal came at a time where this country actively works daily to eviscerate every single step of self-determination Black bodies have made. Lifetimes of work that your living parents and grandparents saw come to fruition and disruption while they yet breathe. You quote Nina Simone in saying that artists work should be a reflection of the time, and then lament that it didn’t entertain you enough.
You Ain’t a Colleague, You a Colonizer
Drake drops a record that seems to damn near praise ICE—Immigration Customs & Enforcement at a time of tyranny. And it don’t just seem like it to me, even The White House’s Instagram account damn near served as the album’s street team, posting the augmented album cover to suit their intended mood.
I didn’t go into this cultural moment as an uncritical fan of either Kendrick or Drake. To be fair I did like Drake with the melodies until he played in Meg Thee Stallion’s face. So I had no dog in this fight except the appreciation of the art form of battle rap. This matters cause I’m not glazin’ KDot for clout. I simply respect and acknowledge the prophetic at work here.
If you can be used as a tool of this administration at this point, it’s true that “you ain’t a colleague you a fuckin’ colonizer.”
The Prophecy Speaks for Itself
Kendrick never has to speak on it again because everything Drake has done since that moment has only effectuated the prophecy itself.
“Black bodies are political. Black joy is political. Black unity is political. Black genius is political. Black art is powerful when it’s political.” — Tiffany Wright, MSW (@tiffinspires)
But I’m just a girl who accidentally here’s a Bible verse in a rap song 🤷🏾♀️
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