• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, February 12, 2025

Every year people expect miracles while watching Super Bowl commercials, and every year there are disappointments.

But what surprised and encouraged me last Sunday was that the messages sent by corporate America and the NFL -- typically conservative organizations -- were uplifting and unifying this year.

Overall, the commercials called out the kind of racial and gender injustices that have been widely dismissed and condemned as “woke.”

And the fact that the president was in the stadium during this festival of kumbaya was lost on no one. He probably didn’t see the commercials, but he was certainly there to experience the 13-minute artistic firestorm and televised revolution that was rapper Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show.

Sure, it was more of a statement than a typical crowd-pleaser.

And as with most breakthroughs, it was threatening to the audiences not familiar with Lamar or rap.

And to be honest, the initial reaction at the Super Bowl party that I attended, filled with aging white boomer friends, was “What’s he saying? I can’t understand a word he’s saying. Can you hear a word he’s saying?  What are they doing?  Where’s the entertainment? This is so boring.”  

Meanwhile, many white suburban middle-schoolers throughout the U.S. mouthed every word.

Indeed, the Pulitzer Prize and multiple-Grammy winner delivered a tough and nuanced take, both in words and visuals, on Black culture, history, resistance, and his own music and roots in Compton.

His blazing performance for the biggest Super Bowl audience ever was stunning.

People who loved the Bob Dylan movie have been asking, “Where are our protest songs today?” Well, they’re here. Especially considering the NFL’s checkered history with race, like the Kaepernick knee controversy, while the preponderance of players have always been Black. 

It was also a surprise that for this game, the NFL had removed its “End Racism” lettering from the end zone.

I started to get an inkling that this would be different when Kendrick opened with, “The revolution ‘bout to be televised. You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.” 

I liked the reference to  Gil Scott Heron, a poet and spoken word performer of the 1970s, who as such could be considered the earliest rapper.

But did Kendrick mean he wasthe wrong guy, or was he referring to the leader of the free world, who left right after halftime?

That's an intriguing question.

Ironically, the only moment that dabbled in a contemporary concept like “retribution” was Lamar’s performance of "Not Like Us" -- a diss track, over his notorious rap battle with Drake.

But it was so much more, starting with actor Samuel L. Jackson appearing as Uncle Sam in red, white and blue sparkles and a star-patterned top hat, introducing the crowd to “the great American game.”

This metaphor of a game within a larger game (football) was elevated and clever. So were the platforms on which the rapper performed, which were shaped and arranged like the buttons on a Playstation controller -- an optic aimed at a younger audience. 

One of the platforms became a subtle maze that suggested the movement of prison inmates in jumpsuits, through grim concrete halls, portraying the prison industrial system, a very different red, white, and blue-land.

And in a great moment of choreography, the all-Black male dancers (women were there later) used these same red, white, and blue costumes to form an enormous American flag with a split down the middle. Kendrick traveled down that split, rapping about “40 acres and a mule,” a promise made to Blacks after the Civil War that did not materialize. What a brilliant way to portray the country, riven after the Civil War, and split now. The flag later came together. Plus, symbolism of the male dancers bent over, showing their backs, also suggested the labor that America was built on.

But back to Uncle Sam, who was also directing Kendrick on how to play the larger game -- i.e, what typical white crowds want. In a booming voice, he used phrases like, “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” after Lamar’s performance of “Squabble Up.” When longtime female collaborator SZA, in red, joined him on stage, Jackson told Kendrick “That’s what America wants! Nice and calm.”

As such, he made some viewers question whether he was supposed to be Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom --  a callback to Jackson playing a loyal house slave in  “Django Unchained.”

I don’t have room to get into all of the Easter eggs, but retired tennis player Serena Williams made a surprise cameo, looking fab on the field, during “Not Like Us,” that diss to Drake  in which she is mentioned, since she was rumored to have dated Kendrick’s nemesis. Williams showed that she’s a fantastic dancer, doing a “Crip Walk” which like herself, also comes out of Compton.  Was it a response to the “C-walk” she did back in 2012, after winning gold at the London Olympics, when she was criticized for going “ghetto” and glorifying “gang culture?”

Kendrick finished the performance with the words "Game Over."

And somehow, in the end, the NFL picked the right guy.