Why are people bashing Kendrick Lamar for only having black performers during his halftime show?

Because people just have to complain about everything. His performance seemed to me to be symbolically very Black experience oriented, so it makes sense he had all Black people.

I prefer the superbowl not be so political for half time, but it’s his moment, he can do what he wants I guess. For me it was showing the trials and tribulations Black people have gone through; but also, was a statement that the United States of America is their country too and showed patriotism.

^How I thought of it too. Loved it though.

I’m not a Hip Hop fan so I didn’t watch the halftime show. But I don’t care if he uses all black people or not. To be honest I haven’t heard anyone slamming it. I’ve heard more people laughing at Taylor Swift getting booed.

Dumbfuck Matt Walsh and his dumbfuck buddies were slamming it, retweeting stuff about it being a “DEI halftime show” and saying nobody knows who Kendrick is, which is the most out of touch thing I have ever heard. Am I the only one who heard that crowd screaming “A minor”?

I have seen various other MAGA assholes bitch about it on social media. DEI is bad unless it excludes white people, then we need it.

Internet echochamber. Was wondering if it was a common sentiment. Maybe not. I thought it was great, a bit underwhelming if anything.

I’ve been reading about it a lot in my Facebook feed and on YouTube. What I’m hearing is that it shows how divided our country is, because certain types of people hated it and certain types loved it. The symbolism went over some people’s heads, and so those people weren’t appreciative, and other people got it and appreciated it.

I enjoyed it but didn’t get some of the symbolism. Here’s a video that explains it well. It doesn’t go into the beef with Drake so much, but more explains the symbolism of the performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ajnW0k0dM0&list=LL&index=1

I didn’t know who he was and I turned to my husband about 5 minutes in and said, “can you imagine an hour and a half concert of that?”

Not my music!

That doesn’t change appreciating what he was doing.

@MakeItSo1701 As I said, I don’t like the genre of music so I base my decision to watch on that. But to put it into some DEI aspect, let’s think about why that might be. Is this the first time an all black performance has occurred? Nope. In fact the last 6 halftime shows have been all hip hop and rap music. Not all black people but the same style of music. At some point it starts to seem like it is being done on purpose.

But let’s look back in history a bit more. Since 2019 the music has mainly been hip hop and rap. Before that, there was a period of more pop style music going back to 2011. Before that it was rock music back to 2002 with the exception of Shania Twain in 2003 and Prince in 2007. Before that it was varied, not only year to year, but within a halftime. Back in the beginning (1967) it was High School and College marching bands.

So I agree that claiming this is DEI is ignorant, but it seems to be more cyclic. You have to get into how the performers are chosen. I looked that up and it seems like there is an Entertainment Section in the NFL who puts forth several options. The host city also gets a big say in who performs. The performers are not paid for their performances so they have to agree. They always do because the exposure is enormous. The decision is usually made way in advance…back in Sept 2024 for last Sunday’s game.

@seawulf575 “Since 2019 the music has been mainly hip hop and rap.”

I am looking at the list of performers since 2019 and I see as follows:

2019: Maroon 5 (white, pop, rock)
2020: Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (Hispanic, pop)
2021: The Weeknd (black, pop, dance music)
2022: Dr. Dre, Snoop, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar (yes, black, hip hop)
2023: Rihanna (black, dance music)
2024: Usher (black, dance music)
2025: Kendrick Lamar (black, hip hop)

Source with list of Super Bowl performers going back to the beginning of time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Bowl_halftime_shows#:~:text=The%20following%20is%20a%20list%20of%20the%20performers%2C,Super%20Bowl.%20Names%20in%20bold%20are%20headline%20performers.

The only people complaining are MAGA because they are racist.

Kendrick is one of my favorite artists. He has won a Pulitzer Prize for his music.

They might be bashing because they did not understand the lyrics?

Please post the lyrics for us? Or a link, with captions?

^here’s the performance: https://youtu.be/KDorKy-13ak

Here’s the meaning of his performance: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5135981-kendrick-lamar-super-bowl-halftime-performance-serena-williams-drake-not-like-us/

@jca2 in 2019, Maroon 5 would not have hit me as hip hop or rap. But that isn’t the full list. Travis Scott (black, rap) and Big Boi (black, rap). So it was in there as well.

But my statement still pretty much holds. There has been a trend towards avoiding white people for several years. But that is also how the halftime shows have been for decades…moving from one standard to another every 6–10 years. Get back into the “rock” years and there were very few black people at all.

@jonsblond Thanks. My YouTube captions missed a lot of the words. Other than the lyrics I enjoyed the music.

I did not get the metaphors, or the poetry.

@seawulf575 You’re right. I see Travis Scott and Big Boi were there.

I loved it, but have heard some older folks bashing it and a few GenX. Not one person has mentioned race, it was just a genre some didnt enjoy.

I think that most people like the type of music that has melody. Rap is mostly devoid of melody and is mostly drums, and monotone vocal sound and is typically very repetitive. To me it’s more like poetry than music. It can be tedious and boring especially when the artist speaks so rapidly under a roar sound so that very few words are understood (like the LIX Super Bowl performance).

I watched and listened to the entire performance. The main thing that I kept thinking was when will it start getting good but to no avail. It got boring pretty quickly for me. I know that Lamar is extremely talented at his art. But that’s the only message that I got from his performance. Truthfully I was glad when it was over. Perhaps other people were disappointed for similar reasons that I was.

With the possible exception of Taylor Swift, there are no white performers with broad appeal across generations.

And Swift isn’t going to perform for what the NFL would pay her.

Instead of using DEI, I assume he hired the most qualified people.

^Such a basic concept so easily forgotten

All my Gen X friends (my generation) like Kendrick. The ones complaining are country music loving, Kid Rock loving, Trump supporters, whom I’m no longer friends with. ;)

@jonsblond Your lurve is 44444, I love that

Well, good! I am glad this seems like a vocal minority on the internet. I read Matt’s tweets and thought I was going nuts. Nobody knows who Kendrick is? What the hell.