A yr in the past, it might’ve been a long-shot wager to select Kendrick Lamar to be the 2025 Tremendous Bowl halftime present headliner.
In actual fact, it appeared as if his second to play the largest stage within the recreation had already come and gone in 2022’s Dr. Dre-led hip-hop extravaganza additionally that includes Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent.
And Lamar’s profession had seemingly peaked with 2017’s “Humble,” his first solo No. 1 single, and its critically acclaimed album “Damn,” which led to his Pulitzer Prize in 2018.
“He was in what I would maybe frame as a midlife lull, a mid career doldrum,” Christopher Driscoll, co-author of 2019’s “Kendrick Lamar and the Making of Black Meaning,” informed The Put up. “You know, the wind had stopped … ‘Mr. Morale [and the Big Steppers,’ Lamar’s 2022 album] was a welcome offering from him. But it wasn’t ‘Damn,’ you know? It just didn’t have the same sort of resonance.”
However rattling if Lamar hasn’t now scored essentially the most prized gig within the biz as the primary solo rapper to headline the Tremendous Bowl when the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs sort out the Philadelphia Eagles on the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday. And it’s all due to “Not Like Us,” the Drake diss monitor that final Sunday noticed Lamar flip up the Grammys — and a champagne-swilling Taylor Swift — with 5 wins, together with Document and Tune of the 12 months.
First topping the charts final Might, the ultimate salvo in his battle with Drake become a hip-hop anthem for the ages — and turned Lamar right into a Tremendous Bowl halftime present headliner.
After an already legendary profession, how did one music take Lamar to a different, career-redefining degree? Particularly one which felt, effectively, not like him.
Nicely, it began when Lamar, Future and Metro Boomin launched “Like That” in March 2024. On that monitor, Lamar boasted that it was “just big me” in a reference to J. Cole calling himself, Drake and Lamar “the big three” on “First Person Shooter.” Drake retaliated in opposition to Lamar on “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle,” and the battle continued backwards and forwards till Lamar delivered the killer blow with “Not Like Us.”
“He’s won the Pulitzer. Some people could say that the beef was kind of beneath him, even if it was with Drake,” stated Driscoll. “It’s like, you know, let it go. You don’t do that.”
However at a time when rap wasn’t booming, all that scrabbling reignited each Lamar and the style.
“He took it back to not only his roots, but I’d say hip-hop’s roots,” stated Driscoll. “He is a student of the craft. And because he’s a student of the craft first … he knows that the way to get the wind blowing again, so to speak, is through taking it back to the playground.”
For Lamar, 37, it was a pugnacious facet of himself that was heard early in his profession freestyling, battle-rapping and making mixtapes as Okay.Dot earlier than he hit it huge with 2012’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City”— and earlier than he turned a paragon of the Black Lives Matter motion with 2015’s “Alright.”
“My intent was to always keep … the nature of it as a sport,” Lamar stated Thursday throughout an interview with Apple Music, which sponsors the halftime present. “I like when artists grit their tooth. Like, I nonetheless watch battle raps. I nonetheless watch Smack/URL, from Murda Mook to [Loaded] Lux to Tay Roc, my bro Daylyt. This has all the time been the core definition of who I’m, and it’s been that manner since day one.
“So I don’t think it was a thing for this year, it was always just a continuum.”
It’s an power that Lamar carries over to his new album “GNX,” a shock launch that dropped in November and options the hit “Luther” with SZA, who will be part of him as his particular visitor on Sunday.
“It was a great transition from ‘Mr. Morale,’ because that was my most intimate,” he stated. “I think it was necessary coming out of that cocoon and feeling like, ‘OK, now I can spread my wings and show every state of who I am, as far as Kendrick Lamar.”
However after the Compton, California rapper carried out “Not Like Us” 5 instances in a row at his Juneteenth Pop Out Live performance on the Kia Discussion board in Los Angeles, the music has come to represent greater than the Drake beef, with a common enchantment that has upped the ante for Tremendous Bowl-sized consumption.
“At the end of the day, the song, I think, is about authenticity and belonging,” stated Driscoll, who is likely one of the lecturers who has even taught school programs on Lamar. “That’s one thing that resonates with all people. You already know, he is ready to all the time preserve it actual, within the sense of telling us the place he’s proper now, who he’s proper now.
“He’s just so gifted at giving us himself, and in this case, the genius of it is that he ostensibly wrote this about another dude, but what he’s doing is creating this anthem that is for us. It’s for whatever moment is there, and that’s amazing. I mean, artistically, that’s just next-level poetry.”
