The DEFINITIVE Breakdown of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Show
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Hey everyone, just a quick heads up that today's episode relies more heavily on video than a typical episode of Dissect. I think it still works okay audio only, but if you end up wanting to see the visuals being referenced, you can watch this episode for free on YouTube. The link is in the description. Thank you and enjoy the breakdown. What should people expect to see and understand about Sunday's performance? Storytelling.

The opening image of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show is America depicted as a game board, and standing in the center square, the most advantageous position on the board is Uncle Sam. Now compare this opening image with the closing image 13 minutes later. Instead

It's the same exact shot, only now it's Kendrick Lamar standing in the powerful center square. Signified by the remote control in his hand, Kendrick has taken control of the game board, and even the control buttons have been completely overtaken by people in all black.

In filmmaking, starting and ending a story with the same shot is called "bookending" and the arc of the entire story is represented in the differences between the two images. Now obviously the big difference in the halftime show is Kendrick's position on the board and the elimination of Uncle Sam.

The question is, how did he do it? How did Kendrick Lamar defeat the boss and beat the game? Well, I spent the last three weeks obsessing over every detail, every button, every prop, every lyric, every movement to understand exactly how Kendrick communicated such an intricate story about the Black American experience in just 13 minutes on the country's biggest stage. Hi, my name is Cole Kushna, host of the music analysis podcast Dissect.

I've written over 300,000 words of analysis on Kendrick Lamar's music alone, and while I'm obviously limited in my ability to speak on Kendrick's lived experience as a black American, what I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on now is the way Kendrick Lamar as an artist communicates his ideas. And I was only going to make this video if I felt like I had something substantial to add to the already abundant discourse around this performance. And I believe I have that. A lot of that.

So, this isn't just a regurgitation of the same takes you've already seen. It is, I hope, the most comprehensive analysis of the performance on the internet. We're going to unpack every detail scene by scene, and more importantly, we're going to show how these details accumulate into a thematically rich cinematic story about the history of America. And so, without further ado, let's dissect.

The show officially begins with an aerial shot of the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. While obviously Kendrick didn't choose the location, we have to acknowledge that New Orleans and the American South is an incredibly relevant setting for the story Kendrick Lamar is about to tell. New Orleans was a major epicenter in the American slave trade. New Orleans also has a rich music history, producing some of the most influential genres and black musicians of the past two centuries.

Even the Superdome itself is significant as a symbol of Hurricane Katrina and the failures of the federal government to properly support a majority black city during a crisis. Thus, New Orleans, with its dichotomous history of exploitation and a vibrant black culture, feels like the perfect backdrop for a story about the dichotomous black American experience. Now, the music we hear during this brief opening shot is not by Kendrick Lamar,

Rather, it's a song called "The Old Guard is Dead" by Gais Guevara, an underground hip-hop artist and political activist. "The Old Guard is Dead" is from Goyard Ibn Saeed, a concept album that uses the lens of the entertainment industry to examine the perpetual exploitation of black life. Now, you probably already put this together, but starting a story about defeating Uncle Sam with a song called "The Old Guard is Dead"

from a concept album with this premise is definitely intentional. It's also a call to go listen to and support this smaller artist, which you should definitely do at some point. You can find a link in the description. Now let's consider the fact that the Superdome is completely lit in red.

This might simply be Apple Music branding. However, it also does resemble a big red button. A big red button that very much looks like the now infamous red button Drake posted during the rap battle with Kendrick. If you don't know, Drake kept hinting at having a red button song that would demolish Kendrick. That red button song turned out to be "Family Matters" which didn't exactly go as Drake planned.

So if the red button is intentional, Kendrick would be subtly trolling Drake, kind of like he did at the Grammys when he wore a Canadian tuxedo. Kendrick saying "I'm pushing the real red button now. I'm about to call you a pedo in front of the entire world at the Super Bowl." Now the red button also doubles as a start button on an arcade game console and start we do as we travel through an Apple Music portal into the Superdome itself.

A 9 square game board is established with an aerial shot, resembling a tic-tac-toe grid. The circle, square, triangle, and X shapes refer to the buttons on a PlayStation controller. And in the stands we see the game loading screen going from 0 to 100%. Now just to get the Drake stuff out of the way, we have to acknowledge that this is at least in part the ultimate response to first person shooter.

the J. Cole-Drake collaboration song that ignited this entire battle back in 2023. First Person Shooter is a video game genre and in that song J. Cole and Drake both mention being as big as the Super Bowl.

So after pushing the red button, Kendrick is now quite literally playing a first-person shooter game at the actual Super Bowl. It's one of the many nails in the coffin to come. So as the game loads, the control buttons light up in a sequence. Square, triangle, circle, X, triangle, square, X, circle, square, triangle, X, circle, square, circle, square.

Now, there's been a few theories that claim this is a video game cheat code. I personally fact checked all the theories, including the popular Grand Theft Auto one. All of them are false. I also personally scoured the internet to find a match and even researched programming language, which is what PG Lang stands for, thinking there might be some connection to computer coding. Unfortunately, I found nothing there either.

So at this point, it's unclear if this sequence is referring to any specific code. However, there is a direct mention of a cheat code later in the performance, and I have a theory about how that relates to this code we see at the start, so more on that later. In any case, the sequence ends on the square just as the loading screen hits 100%.

A spotlight then shines down on Uncle Sam standing in the powerful center square. Uncle Sam introduces himself before announcing this as... This is of course a play on the show being at the Super Bowl, the biggest single game of America's biggest sport of football. It also formally contextualizes the video game control buttons and the tic-tac-toe game board. We now understand the game we're playing, the great American game.

But what is this game exactly? Well, in my interpretation of the performance, we're going to see four main levels or layers of the game play out simultaneously.

Level 1 is Kendrick Lamar performing at the Super Bowl, navigating the game of the halftime show. How will he choose to play this game in front of this audience? Will he play by the unspoken rules of a traditional American halftime show? Will he play it safe and play the hits? Will he give us what we want or what we need? Level 2 is Kendrick Lamar as a rapper playing the rap game, a black American music genre.

The subtext here is of course his current battle with Drake, who we can think about like a final boss in a video game, the one Kendrick had to overthrow in order to be crowned the unanimous greatest rapper alive.

Level 3 is Kendrick Lamar as a black artist, representing black entertainers, black musicians, black athletes, and any other black public figure who must navigate their respective industries. This game comes with certain rules or expectations rooted in whiteness. And when the black players express themselves outside of those rules, there's always consequences.

We think of Serena Williams' crip walk at the Olympics. We think of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. We think of Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the '68 Olympics, who were ostracized and banned from the US team after raising a fist on the podium. And finally there is level 4, the principal level that informs all the previous levels. And that's Kendrick Lamar as a Black American, an avatar for the Black experience throughout history attempting to navigate life in America.

Each of these four levels of the Great American Game will be developed throughout the performance. And what's cool about layering the game this way is that each level imbues the symbols and actions in the performance with their own layered meanings. For example, let's look at the playing field in the center, a simple long strip of plain gray floor matting.

Leaving this field so ambiguous allows it for it to be layered with a variety of meanings, depending on what level of the game you're thinking about. At the base level, the field is a play on an actual football field, a meta-reference to Kendrick performing on a football field and navigating this very performance.

It is a stage shaped like a field placed on an actual field. This also ties into the various sports fields black athletes navigate, which are themselves a kind of stage. We can also think of this field as a battlefield in a first-person shooter video game. When the streetlights are lit, the field transforms into an urban city street.

a symbol of community but also violence, a kind of battlefield for warring gangs in places like Compton. Later, when the perimeter of the field is lit, it morphs into a jail yard, evoking the mass incarceration of black Americans.

And finally, within the larger historical context of the show, we can't help but think of a plantation field, the central setting of American slavery. Again, the simplicity of the design allows for this kind of symbolic malleability. This is P.G. Lange's conceptual superpower, the ability to imbue so much meaning into what on the surface are incredibly simple design elements. Now let's turn to the various levels of meaning in Uncle Samuel Jackson.

On the surface, it appears Kendrick is playing the game. He's brought a recognizable black man America has grown to love, and he's playing a traditional character that historically represents American patriotism. Of course, it's not that simple. Sam Jack as Uncle Sam is a bit of a Trojan horse, and the various layers of meaning begin to reveal themselves when we know a little about Jackson's history. Samuel Jackson grew up in Tennessee, a Confederate state during the American Civil War and part of a historically racist American South.

As a child, Jackson had trouble compromising who he was to assimilate into white society, and he became an activist as a young adult. He was an usher at Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral and was expelled from Morehouse College when he helped lock the Board of Trustees in a campus building for two days in protest of the college's mostly white board.

Jackson would eventually overcome a drug addiction and go on to become the most successful American actor in history. So Samuel Jackson being a part of this show's ensemble is incredibly significant. He's a black man who played the American game on hard mode and not only won, but won while remaining authentic and true to who he is.

As for the character itself, Uncle Sam was originally a propaganda agent used to recruit Americans into the army. Now Uncle Sam is mostly a symbol of traditional American values and patriotism. And it's not a coincidence that this character shows up in Kendrick's performance on an NFL stage.

as the NFL has been a propaganda agent for American patriotism and the military for years. Kendrick also used Uncle Sam as the face of a material-based American dream in To Pimp a Butterfly. It's there Uncle Sam tries to dissuade Kendrick from using his personal success to unite his community. Rather, Uncle Sam wants him to blow his money irresponsibly so he can imprison him for tax evasion like Wesley Snipes.

Uncle Sam takes on a similar antagonist role in the Super Bowl show. He's the influential ringmaster, the video game final boss, and a symbol of traditional white American values all in one. But a black man playing Uncle Sam and voicing white American values is also a play on an Uncle Tom, a historical caricature derived from Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Today, an Uncle Tom is a slur for a black person who is subservient or deferential to white people, either out of fear or opportunism. In the latter, the Uncle Tom subordinates himself to achieve a more favorable status within white society, sometimes at the expense of other black people. Samuel L. Jackson famously played an Uncle Tom in Django Unchained, a character Kendrick cited in To Pimp a Butterfly as an example of someone who disparages his own people. "No better than Samuel L. on the Django."

As we'll see, the messaging encoded in the Uncle Sam/Uncle Tom hybrid character is a statement about authenticity. And Uncle Tom is an example of a black person playing the game inauthentically. While they might make some personal gains, it's at the expense of their own people. It's selfish, disingenuine opportunism, which, uncoincidentally, is exactly Kendrick's critique of Drake's exploitation of hip hop culture.

Kendrick is saying it's not entirely about winning. It's also about how you win. And it's about how you transform your personal win into a communal win, something Kendrick has attempted to do with his win over Drake. And so, like the field and the game itself, Uncle Sam represents a variety of ideas. He's the story's antagonist,

He's the video game's final boss. He's an Uncle Tom. He's a reversed minstrel show character in an anti-minstrel performance. And he's a mouthpiece for white supremacy and America's history of marginalizing its black citizens. And all of this is embodied in Samuel L. Jackson, a black elder statesman who won the great American game and did so without compromising his authenticity. Next we cut to another wide shot where we see Start Here with an arrow pointing down to the center square, continuing the video game motif.

We then cut to a close-up of our main character, our video game avatar, Kendrick Lamar. Centered in the frame is a large diamond-encrusted ring over his gloved fingers. This is an Eliante brand evil eye ring. An evil eye is an ancient concept that believes an envious or malicious gaze can inflict harm upon its target.

And in ancient Greece and Rome, they made protective evil eye amulets to ward off this evil energy. It appears Kendrick wears his evil eye ring to protect himself from the hundreds of millions of eyes he knew would be watching and judging his performance.

This illuminates the theme of Kendrick's entire wardrobe, which is protection, a play on video game avatars wearing armor or a protective costume. Kendrick dons a thick leather jacket and black leather gloves, and his backwards hat features a diamond angel wing brooch. Angel wings are a classic symbol of protection and divine guidance, and Kendrick pinning one to his hat seems like a play on the winged Mercury, a god in Roman mythology who wore a winged helmet.

Mercury was one of God's messengers, and we know Kendrick has long believed himself to be a messenger of God, so this reference makes a ton of sense.

This idea is reinforced by the meaning behind the name on his jacket, Gloria, which is derived from the word glory as in God's glory. It's also the name Kendrick gave his pen on the final track of GNX. So between the two references, we understand that Kendrick's pen is a conduit for God's glory. And this divine pen is one of our video game characters' weapons of choice. The other weapon is his microphone, which amplifies his words to the world.

This concept illuminates the meaning of the 5 plus 5 patch on his hat, which is a reference to the line 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 plus 5 from Not Like Us. This implied Kendrick had 10 total diss tracks prepared for Drake, like an ammunition stock, tying into the protection and weapon theme of the wardrobe. So, suited in protective leather with his weapon in his hand,

Our video game avatar Kendrick Lamar stands on top of his version of the Batmobile, a 1987 GNX. For those of you who don't know by now, the Buick GNX or Grand National Experiment is essentially Kendrick in car form. They were only made in one year, 1987, Kendrick's birth year, and they were only made in one color, black. The GNX was known for its speed. It was famously faster than the flashier Ferrari Testarossa, despite being a fraction of the cost. Kendrick

Kendrick's father actually owned the parent car of the Grand National, an '87 Buick Regal. And this was the car Kendrick was driven home in from the hospital when he was born. And so we could see why Kendrick has an affinity for the GNX. Because in many ways it mirrors his own story.

an underdog, high-performance vehicle that outperformed the more privileged competition. A car whose nickname was "The Dark Side", matching Kendrick's current black Air Force One energy. Understanding the significance of the GNX, this opening image of Kendrick on the hood wearing a Gloria jacket named after his pen and praising God is incredibly symbolic. From the hood to the Super Bowl, from Compton to the biggest stage in the world, a rose grown from concrete. And it's all because of rap and because of God.

In the first act or exposition of most traditional story structures, the main character is established, who they are, where they're from, and crucially, what it is that they want. What is their stated desire in this story? This is exactly what Kendrick establishes in the opening track Unofficially Titled Bodies, which is an unreleased song first heard in the trailer for GNX.

He begins by saying, reincarnated in love, which we'll talk about more in a second, but then he unfurls a series of bars that defines what he's all about and what he's not about. He raps, no more handshakes and hugs. The energy only circulate through us. Everybody must be judged, but this time God only favor in us.

20 years in, still got that pen dedicated to bare hard truth. The etiquette speak with a vigilant tongue, but the predicate this time is fuck you. This begins what will be a performance-long emphasis on us versus them.

Kendrick makes clear his pen, his words, are here to bring hard truths, to judge and expose those who are contributing to the world's immorality and degradation. Anyone paying attention to Kendrick's output the past year knows he's been drawing this line since the Drake battle. He explained it the most explicitly on Watch the Party Die, the closest thing we have to a manifesto for this era of Kendrick. Referring to Drake, he rapped, "...just walk that man down, that'll do everyone a solid."

It's love, but tough love sometimes gotta result in violence. If you parade in gluttony without giving truth to the youth, the graveyard is company. Just tell us what casket to choose." Later he expands on his vision of a future world, rapping, "I see a new earth, filled with beautiful people making humanity work. Let's kill the followers that follow up on popping mollies from the obvious degenerates that's failing to acknowledge the hope we trying to spread. If I'm not his vote, then you need to bring his fucking head.

Kendrick is entirely out of patience for anyone who isn't working toward improving humanity for our children. For Kendrick, Drake is a symbol of the kind of guy he's focused on exposing and eliminating. A MAGA-adjacent degenerate selfishly exploiting his influence for his own benefit.

someone who promotes online gambling to the youth, someone who has blatantly disrespected the forefathers of the very hip-hop, black American culture he profits from. This is a central context to understand as we get deeper into Kendrick's performance, because it's this vigilante cutthroat energy that he embodies throughout the entire show. I mean, just look at the shirt he was wearing underneath his jacket.

While it appeared to be plain black, when he took off his jacket backstage, it revealed the back text "Keep them away from me." It's the line between "they" and "us" and "not like us." In this performance, Kendrick will be simultaneously calling for unity and disunity. He vows to distinguish and unite the good, and expose, separate from, and destroy the evil. To watch the party die. And you're either with him or against him.

And this entire show, from the setlist to its messaging, is Kendrick defining that line. Understanding our main character's morals and motivations, we return to the opening shot of Kendrick in his Compton suit of armor. When the beat switches to the more aggressive portion of the track, Kendrick says, we go body for body, just as a number of black bodies begin piling out of the GNX.

As with everything else, there's layers to this symbolism. First, the idea of a clown car. In Watch the Party Die, Kendrick describes his opposition as clowns more than once. He says, And later on the song, he says,

So we might see the GNX as Kendrick bringing a clown car to a clown show, a comically inept state of current affairs in America. Second, the GNX embodies the idea of a Trojan horse, which in Greek mythology is a large wooden horse filled with warriors that was disguised as a gift. The concept totally fits the theme of Kendrick's show and his coup of Uncle Sam.

The NFL invited Kendrick Lamar, but he snuck in his homies, his soldiers, his community. Also, I just have to point out, between the Evo I ring, the Mercury wing, and now the Trojan horse, we have three allusions to ancient Greece and Rome. Yeah, I don't think performing at Caesar's Superdome was lost on Kendrick.

Finally, the image of black men and women packed tightly into closed quarters and piling out of the car almost certainly is an allusion to the ships that transported enslaved Africans to America. I know that might feel like a stretch right now, but as you'll see, this begins a very important narrative thread in the show, where Kendrick alludes to major events in the history of black people in America.

This specific narrative thread is done in chronological order, so here at the very beginning of the show, he alludes to the very beginning of black American history. This is literally square one, which uncoincidentally is set in the square control button, a box, the classic symbol of limitation, restriction, and confinement.

Throughout the second half of Bodies, Kendrick rises up from his kneeling position atop the car and he kind of wobbles in place while swinging his arm. Also if you pay close attention to this entire intro, you'll notice he maintains the same non-animated gaze, not moving his eyes at all. Kendrick here is mimicking a video game character selection screen when you choose the fighter you want to play as.

This then begs the question, who exactly is choosing Kendrick for this fight? Well, this is answered by what we see next. By the end of Bodies, most of the black men and women who piled out of the GNX have left the stage. Only a group of women dressed in all red remain, who stand near the car looking at Kendrick.

When Badi suddenly stops, Kendrick and these women kneel to the ground for a moment. The women then stretch and shake their arms toward Kendrick, and the energy transferred from these women to Kendrick through this gesture raises him to his feet again. And right after being selected and powered by these women, Kendrick directly acknowledges being chosen.

So who exactly are these women who anoint and empower Kendrick? These are Kendrick's guardian angels. They are a representation of Kendrick's ancestors and very likely a direct acknowledgement of specific people in his life who he's lost.

This interpretation is reinforced by who we see pile out of the car next: a group of black men in white shirts, blue jeans, and Nikes. Unlike the monochromatic uniforms the other people wear, this group of black men are made distinct through their traditional streetwear and will become an important presence throughout the show. They end up standing in two circles. One group is on the steps, the other forms a circle around Kendrick in front of the GNX. They raise their hands in the air over Kendrick's head.

anointing and empowering him. Like the women in red, these are Kendrick's angels. They are the dead homies. The young men Kendrick grew up with that died far too soon.

Reinforcing this interpretation even further is the specific number of these men and women we see. There are 16 women in red, and while there are only 10 men with white tees here on stage, we'll see 6 more sitting on top of the streetlights later in the show. So why 16? Well, let's take a listen to the opening track of GNX, Whacked Out Murals.

Kendrick's 16 fallen friends are represented by the 16 dead homies and 16 guardian angels that anoint Kendrick here at the start of the game. They have chosen him as their messenger, their video game avatar.

Kendrick is a reincarnation of his ancestors. This is why he begins the entire performance with the line, reincarnated with love. Also, at the exact moment the dead homies are anointing Kendrick in the circle, we hear this opening line from Squabble Up. Reincarnated, I'm a stargazer.

Understanding the significance of 16, we now recognize that Uncle Sam has 16 stars pinned to his lapel, which may be another nod to Kendrick's fallen angels, the deaths of whom can all be pinned on Uncle Sam or America's history of violence against black Americans.

Finally, while I usually stay away from angel numbers in my analysis, the meaning behind the number 16 is too spot on not to at least mention. As 16 is "a sign from your angels and the universe that your thoughts and actions are aligned with your soul's purpose."

And so, divinely anointed by his community, armed with his divine pen, and guided and protected by divine angels, Kendrick's opening declaration is a thesis statement. The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time, but the wrong guy.

This is, of course, a flip on Gil Scott Heron's famous 1970 poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which Heron explained was expressing the idea that true change and revolution was not something you'd ever see shown on a corporate-owned TV station. Rather, true revolution begins in one's mind. That was about the fact that the first change that takes place in your mind, you have to change your mind before you change the way you live.

Now, we're going to talk a lot more about this idea when Kendrick ends his performance on a call to turn your TV off. But here at the show's start, Kendrick flips Heron's phrase to imply the performance you're about to witness is revolutionary and thus while the time is right for change, the NFL picked the wrong guy. In other words, Kendrick is not going to play by the standard rules of the game.

Kendrick's quote of a socially conscious poet from the 60s and 70s is a fitting gesture while wearing bell-bottom pants, which we see clearly for the first time when he stands up saying these lines. Bell-bottom pants were a symbol of the anti-war, equal rights, counterculture movements of the 60s and 70s. And Kendrick is no doubt nodding to this era while quoting one of its most iconic slogans.

Now, after being anointed and empowered by his fallen homies and ancestors, Kendrick performs the song "Squabble Up". Like we'll see with every song that's performed, the broad theme of the song contributes to the story being told. With "Squabble Up", Kendrick is preparing for a fight.

Because what is the collective black American experience if not for one long continuous fight? It reminds me of the intro for All Right, where Kendrick quoted Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, saying, Here at the story's start, Kendrick is ready to fight on the behalf of his ancestors, which we see in formation behind him mimicking fight moves with their unified dances.

They are quite literally squaring up on the square control button. Meanwhile, the dead homies all dance joyously on the stairs, which in this context seems to depict porch steps in a neighborhood like Compton. We also notice that Kendrick now has full autonomy over his body, moving freely after being chosen from the character selection screen. All this freedom, defiance, self-expression, and unity is too much for Uncle Sam.

Feeling threatened by so much uncompromising blackness, he reappears to tell Kendrick his people are being... Too loud! Too reckless! Too...

Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto is a thinly veiled racist refrain that has scored the black American experience throughout history. Uncle Sam is making the golden rule of the great American game very clear. Whiteness is the standard and anything outside of that standard is otherized. For the majority of American history, this otherness was made very explicit through

through slavery and segregation. In more recent history, otherness is coded in dog whistle words like ghetto or thug or illegal alien. If Kendrick, i.e. black Americans, want to compete in the great American game, they must conform to the great American standard of whiteness. They must fall in line or face the consequences. Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up!

Now before moving on, I have to point out a cool easter egg we hear during this little interlude. The backing music underneath Uncle Sam's voice is from a song called "I Believe to My Soul" by Monk Higgins. Why is this Monk Higgins song relevant? Well, about 30 seconds after the portion we just heard, we hear this: And about 30 seconds after this part, we hear this:

Yes, I Believe to My Soul is the exclusive sample source for Not Like Us, which Kendrick will begin to formally tease later in the performance. So the portion we hear beneath Uncle Sam is a little wink to us in the know. It's a tease before the tease. It's also a subtle shot to Uncle Sam himself, making clear he is part of the they in They Not Like Us.

After establishing the main character's motivations and desires, Uncle Sam's demand to play the game is Kendrick's call to adventure, which in traditional story structure is the challenge that sets the protagonist on their journey. This signals the show's second act, beginning with the song "Humble," a direct response to Uncle Sam's call to tighten up and fall in line. We see Kendrick alongside 60 black men in the formation of an American flag,

On the surface, Kendrick is playing the game, humbling himself and falling in line. He's performing his biggest hit song, and from a distance, this American flag is the kind of patriotic spectacle in a typical halftime show. Of course, the devil, or in this case, the rebellion, is in the details. Because within the context of this show, what does an American flag made of black bodies represent?

American slavery. The fact that enslaved black labor was fundamental to the economic, industrial, and political foundation of America and its rise to a global economic superpower. The flag also remains divided down the center throughout the entire song. It is never the United States, but always the Divided States, a clear statement about the perpetual division of the country since its inception.

Conflict and division is also explicitly shown in this formation, where the two sides face each other in a battle stance.

This could allude to anything from the American Civil War, the warring ideologies of Democrats and Republicans, or even gang conflict between the Bloods and Crips, which could also be represented by the Reds and Blues. At one point, we see some of the men raise their fist in the air, which is generally a symbol of resistance and might specifically allude to the Black Panther fist. We also see the men briefly place their hands together above their heads, which resembles the pointed hoods of the Ku Klux Klan, America's notorious white supremacist group.

And so Kendrick's entire performance of Humble is a double entendre. It is at once Kendrick playing the game, humbling himself and playing the hit song with a patriotic American flag. At the same time, it is also loaded with coded symbolism exposing the hypocrisy of America.

A nation that outwardly promotes the idea that all men are created equal, but has never lived up to its own constitutional axiom. It is a nation that has routinely told its black citizens to sit down and humble themselves, to know their place, to tighten up and play by the rules of the great American game. Humble is interrupted by a brief instrumental passage where rolling snare drums and a human voice mimic the sounds of rapid gunshots.

This triggers the group of black men to scramble chaotically across the field, resembling what happens when gunshots are fired on a city block. We also notice that the men scramble in two different directions, separating into two groups on either side of the field. This continues the historical narrative threaded within the show. The GNX recalls slave ships, the American flag made of black bodies alludes to American slavery, and now the dispersion of black people across the field depicts the Great Migrations.

The Great Migrations refer to the millions of black Americans that fled the brutal post-slavery conditions of the South, which included strict segregation, indentured servitude, convict leasing, and widespread lynching. One common destination during the Great Migrations was Los Angeles. Specifically, the population of Kendrick's hometown of Compton was radically transformed by the second Great Migration in the 50s and 60s, when it went from an almost entirely white city to a majority black city by 1970.

In his Super Bowl press conference, Kendrick spoke on the Southern influence in LA when asked about the significance of performing in New Orleans. Same thing in LA. A lot of our family members moved out to California from the South for new opportunities. There's a big connection between LA and the South. That's a bar. It's crazy, bro. Out of all my friends, LA, us growing up, all our grandparents, either from Louisiana, Texas, Chicago.

Like, period. So our dialect and how we talk, it gauges from like the South and like the Bay Area, so

That energy right there and you making that correlation, it means a lot to me for people to understand that. Now, after the gunshot interlude and the scattering of men in two groups on either side of the field, Kendrick performs DNA, another big song off of Damn. Again, he's kind of playing the game by performing one of the bigger songs off his biggest album, but it's still not the kind of song you typically hear at the Super Bowl.

DNA is full of affirmations like, I got royalty inside my DNA, and I transform like this, perform like this, was Yeshua's new weapon. This latter line refers to Jesus' Hebrew name, Yeshua, and once again Kendrick is asserting he is an instrument of God. He is reminding his people of their worthiness and value, and as he raps, we see one of the groups of men assemble behind Kendrick, following him toward the middle of the field. After organizing this side, Kendrick jogs to the group of men on the other side.

And if you watch carefully, you'll notice before Kendrick arrives, the men aren't really organized and are moving chaotically. When Kendrick does arrive, they immediately align in formation. This begins to make clear how Kendrick plans to overthrow Uncle Sam, which is by uniting and empowering his community. In this way, he is somewhat of a Pied Piper, using his music to unify around a common enemy. This thread continues with the next track, Euphoria, which is of course Kendrick's first battle track levied against Drake.

It's also a song with no chorus. It's just non-stop rapping for six minutes straight. Not exactly the kind of song you would perform at a Super Bowl. This is why in the stands we see a big sign that reads, warning, wrong way.

This is often a message that appears in video games when you're going in the wrong direction, because according to the rules of the Great American Game, Kendrick should not be playing Euphoria at the Super Bowl. He's also leading his men in the wrong direction, back toward the middle of the field again, reuniting them with the other group of men who are walking toward the middle of the field in the other direction. Again, Kendrick is using his music, his influence, his voice to bring his people together.

Also, if you look closely during Euphoria, you can see that the field is now enclosed in thin strips of light around its perimeter, transforming the field into a walled prison yard.

And within this context, we notice that the wardrobes of the black men we see inside the yard resemble the monochromatic attire of prisoners. This imagery builds on the historical timeline of the slave ship, American slavery, and Great Migrations, as the prison yard is a symbol of the mass incarceration of black Americans that began after the Civil War. Indeed, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as a punishment for a crime.

And this loophole became the foundation for a system of exploitative prison labor that targeted black people in order to replace the labor shortage after slavery was abolished.

A collection of laws called "Black Codes" criminalized everyday activities for Black Americans, enabling states to lease prisoners to plantation owners and corporations, perpetuating slave-like conditions. In more recent history, Nixon and Reagan's "War on Drugs" tripled incarceration rates during the latter half of the 20th century, disproportionately affecting Black Americans. Now, after leading the two groups of men back together, Kendrick ends Euphoria with a new couplet that seems to have been written specifically for the Super Bowl.

Kendrick here says, I know y'all boys sleep. Ever since Parmelee, it's KDOT. This is a reference to North Parmelee Avenue in Compton, a cross street to West 137th Street.

which is where Kendrick's childhood home was located. KDOT or KDOT is of course Kendrick's nickname, but was also his official rap name until 2009. So clearly Kendrick is evoking his roots with this couplet, which makes for the perfect transition to the show's next scene.

Kendrick's reference to a Compton street takes us to a literal streetlight, as the field now transforms into an urban city street. We see one of the dead homies laying on top of the light, his arms behind his head as if he's looking up at the stars. This visual symbol has a bit of history in Kendrick's artistic output.

He used streetlights in a similar way in the All Right music video, and Kendrick himself was also seen on a streetlight in a 2020 PG Lang promo video. However, the most relevant example to the Super Bowl is actually the first time Kendrick used this symbol back in 2012's Good Kid, Mad City short film. There we see a man hanging upside down from a streetlight on Parma Lee Avenue, the same exact street Kendrick just referenced by name.

Now some people have suggested this image is a reference to the Hanged Man tarot card, which portrays a man who hangs upside down yet appears calm and peaceful.

Generally speaking, the hangman tarot card symbolizes sacrifice and surrender. It often appears in readings to indicate a time of pause and reflection, suggesting that to move forward in life, we must first surrender our egos, detach from our material possessions and desires, and embrace a new perspective. These ideas also seem reflected in the PG Lang video, where Kendrick himself is lying peacefully on the streetlight. Below him, singer Georgia Smith speculates about what Kendrick might be doing up on the light.

I wonder what he's thinking about up there. Or if he's even thinking at all.

Georgia alludes to the answer here. Kendrick is not thinking. This entire PG Lang video is influenced by the spiritual teachings of Eckhart Tolle. And Kendrick is in a meditative state of non-thinking peace, a state of ego death. He's quite literally risen above the noise of the physical world and is connected to the deeper dimension of present moment consciousness. Both the Hangman Tarot Card Theory and this PG Lang video help to inform our interpretation of the dead homie on the streetlight at the Super Bowl.

He's in a relaxed meditative state, risen above the physical world and connected to the stars above. In death, he is at peace. He has returned to the source and becomes a beacon of light for the living, as symbolized by the literal light he lays on.

Consistent with this theme of afterlife, we pan down from the street to once again see the 10 dead homies, Kendrick's guardian angels, who now joyously back Kendrick with a harmonized acapella. Placing them on the block under the streetlight is consistent with the first urban setting they occupied, which were the porch steps on the square stage.

The Dead Homies are played by 10 turf dancers from Bay Area dance group's Turf Fiends, Unknown, It's Them, and Best Alive Dance Team. An acronym for "taking up room on the floor," turf dancing was born in Oakland, California and grew out of the Boogaloo dance style of the 1960s. Kendrick's inclusion of Bay Area turf dancers widens his West Coast homage beyond Los Angeles, and even the harmony they sing is a subtle nod to the Bay.

This acapella is a variation of the famous bass line from White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, a rock band from San Francisco who was part of the bell-bottom wearing counterculture movement of the 1960s.

Surrounded by his dead homies singing acapella under a streetlight makes for an important setting for the song Man at the Garden, which Kendrick said was the defining song on GNX and most accurately captured who he was at this moment in time. Throughout the track, Kendrick describes why he's worthy of the blessings he receives, noting the sacrifices he's made, the trauma he's endured, the environment he survived,

and the moral values he's upheld throughout his struggles. He has played the game authentically, and he's tried to use his influence for positive change in his community. These sentiments are potently summed up in the song's refrain, I Deserve It All, a powerful affirmation of worthiness coming from someone who we know once struggled with survivor's guilt.

Now the title "Man at the Garden" is generally understood as a biblical reference to Adam, whose name means "man" in Hebrew, at the Garden of Eden. However, what this Super Bowl setting seems to make clear is that we can also interpret "Man at the Garden" as referencing a cemetery garden, where Kendrick visits his deceased friends and relatives, just as we see here beneath the streetlight. In line with Kendrick being powered by his ancestors, the implication of "Man at the Garden" is that Kendrick is living for them.

taking full advantage of the opportunities his dead homies were robbed of. He specifically expresses this sentiment in the line "Every reason why my ancestors sent me, bitch I deserve it all." With this context, we can almost view this streetlight scene like one of those roadside memorials, where candles or flowers are placed at the location of someone's passing. We also notice how joyful and vibrant the dead homies are.

Like the man at peace on top of the streetlight, in death these men are freed of the burdens of life, free to be who they are without judgment. Unlike the monochromatic uniforms of the other men, they sport jewelry, gold teeth, dreadlocks, and ball caps. While these men are dead, they are full of life. It's an incredibly beautiful and touching tribute, and for me one of the most powerful moments of the entire performance.

In America, what happens when a group of black men gather on the block? The authorities come. And this is exactly what happens next, as Uncle Sam appears sending the dead homies scattering away. He tells Kendrick, I see you brought your homeboys with you, the old culture cheat code. He then looks menacingly into the camera and says, Scorekeeper! Scorekeeper!

Uncle Sam is threatened by a united, resistant group of black men who know their worth and have a purpose. That's because historically, this is how black Americans have enacted change, through organizing, through collective activism, through communal disruption of a system engineered against them. A

Uncle Sam describes this as the old culture cheat code because he knows it works and fully understands that his power depends on maintaining the status quo. And so while Kendrick previously got off with a warning when he was told to tighten up after performing squabble up, now Uncle Sam ominously deducts a life.

This plays into the video game motif of having multiple lives or attempts to beat a level. But it's also an allusion to the ways America has routinely used violence when progressive movements become a legitimate threat to disrupt the country's power structures. The one life that's deducted is often an assassination of a movement's leader.

Perhaps the most well-known example of this is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who is now widely celebrated by America, but in his time was seen as a national threat by the FBI. Under a program called COINTELPRO, the FBI wiretapped his phones, spied on his extramarital affairs, and attempted to blackmail him into committing suicide.

After his assassination, King's family maintained the belief that his murder was part of a larger conspiracy involving government officials, something the US's own House Select Committee also concluded after the 1975 investigation.

However, King's assassination is just one of many examples of Black men and women being murdered for threatening America's white supremacist power structures. There's Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was also targeted by COINTELPRO and assassinated in a raid orchestrated by the FBI and Chicago Police Department. There's also lesser known martyrs like Mississippi's Reverend George Lee, who in the 1950s used his influence to urge Black people to register and vote. He was shot in the face and died in May of 1955.

That same year, another Mississippi voting organizer, Lamar Smith, was shot by three white men in broad daylight. There was also the director of Mississippi's NAACP branch, Medgar Evers, who was shot by a sniper after leading an integration campaign in 1963.

There's Warless Jackson, an NAACP treasurer who was murdered by a car bomb planted by a white supremacist group in 1967. And there was the married couple and activists Harry and Harriet Moore, who were murdered by a house bomb after challenging barriers to voting registration and advocating for equal pay for black teachers. Unfortunately, this list goes on.

and are just a few examples of the historical implications of Uncle Sam's deduct one life. Because organizing, mobilizing, building strength in numbers, these actions break the biggest rule of the great American game. And in this game, the penalty for this, historically, is death.

We cut from Uncle Sam's ominous declaration to inside the Red X control button stage, where Kendrick performs peekaboo. The Red X stage is a play on being X'd out or killed, and it's my belief that this entire scene inside the X is meant to portray an afterlife setting, as it directly follows Uncle Sam's command to take a life. Inside the X, we only see men dressed in white, the color traditionally associated with heaven and angels.

It's also the only stage that is both enclosed and features the actual green turf of the football field. This is a representation of a walled garden. A walled garden has long been associated with heaven, as the word paradise stems from the Persian word paradiza meaning walled garden. Likewise, it's generally understood that the biblical Garden of Eden was also walled, as the Hebrew word for garden implies an enclosed area.

It's the walls that protect the beauty and holiness of the garden from the outside world, which is why we see the other men on the outside of the red fence blocked from getting in. And so directly following Kendrick's performance of "Man at the Garden", we literally see him inside the garden just after one of his lives is taken.

Now, along with the 10 dead homies, we see 23 men and all white, plus Kendrick himself making a total of 24. This may be subtle homage to the late Kobe Bryant, Kendrick's friend who wore the number 24 and gets shouted out by name in Peekaboo. Now, if you've been paying attention to the discourse around the Super Bowl show, then you probably know about the viral theory regarding this X stage, the late rapper XXXTentacion, and Drake.

This is an area that I'm not entirely comfortable going too much into, and there's plenty of coverage out there for those who want to take the deep dive. But suffice it to say, the theory essentially claims that Kendrick believes Drake was involved in XXX's murder, and that Kendrick has been alluding to this in his recent music, most explicitly on GNX's Peekaboo. And so when all this X imagery appeared during the performance of Peekaboo at the Super Bowl, well, it added a ton of gas to the theory. But

Aside from the obvious X connection, there's also the fact that the X is placed directly on the 30-yard line, which in Roman numerals is XXX. And when the four women appear inside the X, they have split-dyed hair, which XXXTentacion helped popularize. So there does seem to be enough allusions to XXX to warrant speculation, and it also fits perfectly within the afterlife theme of the scene.

However, my personal favorite aspect of the peekaboo performance is how it fits into the show's narrative structure. The entire halftime show is exactly 13 minutes, and this red X scene occurs from 6:15 to the 7 minute mark, meaning it is the exact halfway point of the show. Why is this important? Well, in traditional Hero's Journey story structure, which we've been loosely tracking throughout the performance, the exact midpoint is known as death and rebirth.

This is when the protagonist experiences a near-death or a metaphoric death, which leads to them emerging as a stronger version of themselves that can eventually overcome their big obstacle. And what Uncle Sam didn't realize is that by deducting one life and sending Kendrick to the X, he was reuniting him with his ancestors, his dead homies and relatives, which we know are the ones who anointed and empowered Kendrick at the story's start. So this metaphoric death experience only ends up strengthening Kendrick.

And a big reason why is because it's here he's reunited with women, his divine counsel.

So if you hadn't noticed, there have been no women present throughout Act 2. The guardian angels that empowered Kendrick during Act 1 disappeared after Uncle Sam's call to adventure. And since then, Kendrick has worked to unite the men on the field during DNA and Euphoria. Now at the end of Peekaboo, four women also wearing white enter the garden and offer Kendrick divine counsel or guidance. Playing into the football and video game motif, Kendrick tells them he wants to make a move. "I want to perform their favorite song."

But you know they love to sue.

So obviously Kendrick here begins teasing Not Like Us. Because in the months leading up to the performance, there was a public conversation about whether or not he would perform the song given that Drake is currently suing Universal Music Group for defamation and harassment over lyrics in Not Like Us. There was speculation about whether the NFL or Universal would allow Kendrick to perform it and if he did, whether he'd be forced to censor Drake's name or have to write new lyrics that didn't involve Drake.

So Kendrick is cleverly acknowledging that conversation while also building tension and excitement for his eventual performance of the song. The lawsuit itself is also another example of Drake operating outside hip-hop tradition. The American legal system has been a devastating weapon used against black Americans for centuries. It's been one of the most effective tools to establish and maintain white supremacy in America. And now Drake voluntarily brings hip-hop lyrics into this system to be used as evidence.

Ironically, in 2022, Drake himself signed a petition against using rap lyrics as evidence in order to "protect black art." Just two years later, Drake has seemingly reversed his stance when it benefits him. If somehow he were to win, it would set an incredibly detrimental legal precedent, one that could be used to justify rap lyrics as legal evidence going forward. And so within the context of this show and its themes,

Kendrick acknowledging the suit is definitely a nod to Drake acting like an Uncle Tom, a spineless, inauthentic vulture willing to threaten the culture he profits from when it serves his self-interests. It's more evidence that Drake is part of the "they" in Kendrick's "They Not Like Us." Now, I want to draw your attention to the women's voices we hear during this interlude. Because to me, they sound a lot like the female voices that appear at the end of Kendrick's 2015 song "King Kunta." Let's compare the two back to back.

I want to make a move. For sure.

While there's no way to confirm that the same woman voiced both parts, they do sound pretty similar. And this is significant because the woman's voice on King Kunta is credited to none other than Whitney Alford, Kendrick's partner and the mother of his children. So there's a good chance that the voice of Kendrick's Divine Feminine Council is actually Whitney's. Aside from this being a fun easter egg, this makes a ton of sense thematically. Whitney plays a similar role of divine guidance throughout Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers,

And it's on that album that Kendrick compares her to a seraphim angel on the song Die Hard. So Whitney voicing Kendrick's guiding angels is perfectly in line with this role and is very likely a reflection of her role in Kendrick's actual life.

And so after consulting the angels, Kendrick decides to slow it down and breaks into the song Luther. He returns to the field where he leads a line of women that form an S shape behind him. Scored by the warm, melodic sounds of Luther, the smooth curves of the S evokes the feminine, a contrast to the more angular patterns of the masculine formations of the men. Of course, the S also works to introduce SZA, who suddenly appears singing on the triangle stage.

Importantly, notice how the triangle is inverted or upside down. This is a brilliant detail because inverted triangles are a traditional symbol of divine feminine energy, representing the womb-like source of creation and feminine power within the universe. This is why the inverted triangle stage is occupied by women.

as Kendrick begins to incorporate the feminine into his performance, bringing balance and harmony. But also notice how there's exactly seven women on the stage. Why seven? Well, it's the number Kendrick opens Luther with. The number seven is one of the most symbolic numbers there is, used specifically throughout the Bible to represent completion and perfection. Of

Of course, this is exactly what is occurring in the show at this moment. And so the seven women standing on the inverted triangle couldn't be a clearer use of these traditional symbols. The melodic sounds of Luther also bring a musical balance to the performance. Because to this point, Kendrick has rapped over 1000 words. There's been no traditional melody, no traditional choruses.

It's just been all raps for nearly 7 minutes straight. SZA brings warmth and melody, i.e. balance to Kendrick's confrontational energy. Together they create harmony between the masculine and feminine, like the ancient yin yang philosophy. This harmony extends into the next song All the Stars from the Black Panther soundtrack, which is performed on the Circle Button stage.

A circle is a very traditional symbol of harmony, unity, and completion across many religions and cultures throughout history. And it's on the circle that we see for the first time the groups of men and women marching together. We then see shots of the field, which has been completely covered with men and women also marching in unison. Importantly, it's on the circle that SZA performs the song's chorus, where she sings

"This may be the night that my dreams might let me know. All the stars approach you. All the stars are closer." In many religions and cultures, stars represent our ancestors watching over us. And in the Black Panther film, T'Challa seeks divine counsel from his ancestors in the astral dimension. This of course aligns perfectly with the story of the Super Bowl show, where Kendrick has been empowered by the dead homies and seeks counsel from divine angels.

And thus, it's no coincidence that we now see men and women, living and dead, all aligning among the stars. All the Stars is followed by the final appearance of Uncle Sam, who praises Kendrick and SZA for their pleasant, melodic performance. As it applies to the halftime show itself, Uncle Sam voices the general American audience's preference for the pleasant melodies of Luther and All the Stars,

over all the belligerent rapping Kendrick was doing. However, as it applies to the larger great American game, Uncle Sam voices America's demand for docile black Americans who play by white America's rulebook, who fall in line and know their place, who don't express themselves authentically, who don't pose a threat to the status quo.

However, Uncle Sam doesn't realize he's been duped. Seduced by the palatable sounds and spectacle, he failed to recognize how the people were unifying right under his nose. Since we last saw Uncle Sam, Kendrick has moved from the X to the triangle to the circle. He's pressed all the right buttons. Or to use a football analogy, he ran the right route. He brought his people together, and together they are ready to overthrow Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam is appalled when he hears Not Like Us begin to play. Building the moment even more, Kendrick starts the song with an important introduction, once again in conversation with his angels, likely voiced by Whitney. It's a cultural divide, I'ma get it on the floor.

Like everything in this show, the cultural divide applies to all levels of the game. It is the divided audience watching this very performance, who either love or hate it. It's the divide in hip-hop culture, with Drake being used as a symbol for those who exploit the culture and take far more than they give.

It can also be interpreted as the nation's current political divide, and perhaps most potently, it refers to the centuries of division between Black Americans and those who have actively worked to oppress them. This historical thread is made even more clear with Kendrick's next line, 40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music.

Kendrick here references Special Field Order No. 15 issued by Union General William T. Sherman in 1865, which granted land to newly freed black Americans. The policy itself actually came out of a meeting Sherman held with 20 black ministers in Savannah, Georgia, including their spokesman Garrison Frazier, who himself was enslaved for over 60 years.

The ministers were asked how the newly freed black Americans could best take care of themselves and how the government could assist them in achieving that. Garrison Frazier responded, quote, The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land and to turn it and till it by our own labor, and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare. We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own, unquote.

Frazier and his people understood the value of ownership and accruing generational wealth in the great American game. Thus, the field order allocated 400,000 acres of black settlement, and tens of thousands of freedmen settled on the land.

However, just a few months later, President Lincoln was assassinated and his successor, President Johnson, reversed the policy. The land was returned to former Confederate planters, displacing thousands and crushing what could have been a transformative step toward racial equity. Today, 40 acres and a mule is a symbol of America's broken promise to its black citizens. It exposes the fallacy of equal opportunity in achieving the American dream, a game that's been rigged since the country's inception.

Thus, Kendrick's next line is, they tried to rig the game, but you can't fake influence. Despite the great American game being rigged against black Americans, Kendrick points to the fact that black culture has been the single most influential culture in the country. American music, dance, language, sports, cuisine, I mean, name your field, they've all been largely shaped by black Americans.

However, America continues to rig the game by extracting the value from black culture while still marginalizing black people at every single point in American history.

This was essentially Kendrick's point in Not Like Us's third verse, where he compares Drake to a colonizer who runs to Atlanta to extract cultural cachet from the black artists there. Because that exemplifies the colonizer's mindset. They use their wealth and power to promise you a better life. They sell it as a partnership. But in reality, they just want your land. They want to extract your value and resources.

They might throw a few bucks your way in the moment, but you'll never have a seat at the table. You'll never own that 40 acres of land. Thus, this entire prelude to Not Like Us is Kendrick making clear that the song he's about to perform is bigger than Drake, bigger than the music. The

The "they" in "us" and "they not like us" is the historic divide in America, which Kendrick has been alluding to throughout the entire show. It's the divide created in slavery and continued into segregation, black codes, mass incarceration, redlining, and all the number of ways America has persistently marginalized its black citizens.

And so between the initial tease of Not Like Us on the Red X stage and this important thematic prelude, the extended introduction creates a ton of tension that is then cathartically released when Kendrick finally breaks into the song proper.

Kendrick and his angels immediately begin a two-step dance that advances them directly toward the camera. This is a visualization of the line "walk him down hold time, know he got some hoe in him." Walking someone down refers to approaching them on foot before shooting them. In boxing, it refers to constantly applying pressure by moving toward an opponent that's trying to create distance.

And that's essentially what we're seeing right now. The camera's POV is the POV of the they and they not like us. It's Uncle Sam. It's Drake. It's the disapproving white America at home. And we see Kendrick and his ancestors, the us and they not like us, literally walking them down.

Now just after Kendrick recites the line "finna crash on this body, I'm John Stockton" we cut to an aerial shot where the men and women crash to the floor, their bodies resembling chalk outlines of a crime scene. While we might typically interpret this as alluding to police brutality, at this point in the story and given the lyric that triggers this moment, it's more likely this represents the bodies of "they" that Kendrick is crashing out on and taking out.

And notice how everyone is on the ground except for the dead homies, who remain standing and dancing in a circle, almost like they're dancing on the graves. Following this moment, we return to Kendrick walking the camera down, and it's at this point we realize exactly where he's leading us, the powerful center square of the game board. Once we've been lured inside, the entire group encloses us in a circle, and Kendrick begins to walk around the circle as if he's circling his prey, getting ready for the kill.

This sets up the literal kill shot, the shot of Kendrick abruptly turning his head to look directly into the camera, look directly into the eyes of Drake, into the eyes of white America, into the eyes of they. Grinning sinisterly, Kendrick raps. Not only did Kendrick say his name, he drew as much attention to it as possible by intentionally making this moment a meme.

Clearly, Kendrick isn't scared of a lawsuit. I imagine the lawsuit only made it easier for him to lean more fully in. Kendrick continues to circle around his prey until the next big moment of the song, the infectious A minor line. We cut to an aerial shot where we see the large group standing in formation as they watch the Superdome yell A minor, knowing millions more at home were doing the same.

Now, there's been a ton of theories around the formation of these men and women and how they might spell out certain words. Some people say it says "seen", others say it spells "pito", some argue for the word "seven", there's also a now debunked theory that it's spelled "Compton" in braille. I have personally stared at this image way too long for the past few weeks.

But as much as I'd love to provide a definitive answer, I simply cannot. In fact, as it stands right now, I don't think it says anything at all. And even one of the dancers in the show came out and said they weren't trying to spell anything, but rather, quote, we just made lines and staggered them, unquote.

And you can kind of see that, right? They aren't perfectly straight, but look at the center square where Kendrick stands. We can see five horizontal lines, right? And you know what also has five horizontal lines? A musical staff. And so let's just pretend this was a musical staff. Where is Kendrick standing in the staff? Well, he is standing where you notate A. You know, like A minor.

Reach, obviously, but come on, I had to at least mention it. Also, since I'm realizing I haven't talked about it yet, Kendrick's chain, of course, is a huge lowercase a, which is first and foremost the PG Lang logo, Kendrick's creative company that produced the entire show. However, it is hard to see the a in this context and not think of a minor. And of course, that isn't lost on Kendrick.

Also, lowercase letters are how you technically denote minor keys and chords in music theory, so it actually works on a technical level. Anyway, while we're also focused on deciphering the formation or screaming A minor, we actually missed what I believe is the most significant part of this shot, likely the entire point of this shot, which is to reveal that the control buttons have now all been completely overtaken by hordes of people dressed in all black. These people have come out of nowhere, and there's tons of them.

So this aerial shot confirms that the coup of Uncle Sam is complete. This moment, the moment the Superdome and millions of people at home yelled A minor, this is the narrative climax of the entire show. Empowered by his ancestors and through the union of his community, Kendrick has taken complete control of the game. The rest of the show is a celebration. And what comes directly after this shot? The refrain of Not Like Us, which in this context is a victory anthem.

As the chorus plays, tennis legend Serena Williams suddenly appears crip-walking under a streetlight. This setting is a reminder that Serena is from Compton and grew up playing on the tennis courts in Tragnew Park on the corner of Alondra Boulevard and Central Avenue, the very cross streets that Kendrick name-checks in his line about Serena in Not Like Us.

At the 2012 Olympics in Wimbledon, Serena celebrated her gold medal win with the very same crip walk she does at the Super Bowl. When asked about why she did it, she said, quote, It was just me. I love to dance. I was so happy. And the next thing I know, I started dancing and moving. I didn't plan it. It just happened.

In other words, she was just expressing herself naturally, authentically. However, Serena was criticized for her four-second dance. It was called immature, classless, and likened to cracking an X-rated joke inside a church. In other words, it was too loud, too loud.

too reckless, too ghetto. It broke the biggest rule of the great American game and was too black for the historically white upper-class sport of tennis. The Crip Walk was just one example of the challenges Serena faced as a black woman working in an industry where whiteness is the standard.

And so Kendrick featuring Serena in the dance during the narrative's definitive moment of victory is no coincidence. In fact, she is given exactly 4 seconds of screen time at the Super Bowl, which uncoincidentally was the exact length of her crip walk at Wimbledon.

Serena is reclaiming her victory dance on the world's biggest stage, dancing on the graves of all those Uncle Sams that attempted to restrict her identity throughout her historic career. Thus, Serena joins Samuel L. Jackson and Kendrick himself as role models for Black Americans born into poverty.

who played the great American game on hard mode and won at the highest level. And importantly, they didn't Uncle Tom their way to the top. They didn't compromise their authenticity, even when it challenged the expectations for black entertainers to conform to traditional white American rules.

Of course, Serena Williams also happens to be relevant to the Drake layer of the game, as she and Drake had some kind of on-and-off-again romance between 2011 and 2015. Serena eventually married Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian in 2017, which apparently Drake felt some kind of way about as he dissed Ohanian out of nowhere on his 2012 track Middle of the Ocean, saying, "...sidebar, Serena, your husband is a groupie."

He claimed we don't got a problem, but no boo. It's like you coming for sushi. We might pop out on him at will like Suzuki. Classic Drake to insert himself into someone's relationship. But Compton native Serena gets the last laugh by crip walking on Drake's grave at the Super Bowl. Game. Set. Match.

The performance's final song, TV Off, rides the high of Not Like Us and celebrates the coup of Uncle Sam, the defeat of the metaphoric "they." Visually, the entire song is dominated by wide, expansive shots in order to communicate that this was a communal win. You'll also notice that Kendrick never leaves the powerful center square. Not only is this symbolic of the defeat of Uncle Sam and the power and influence being reclaimed by his community,

It's also a full circle nod to the show's start, where Kendrick started on the block, on the square control button. While this initial square communicated the restrictions placed on black Americans throughout history, putting them in a box, the powerful center square of the game board signals Kendrick's freedom from those restrictions. He's now in control of the game.

Another full circle moment is created when we notice that throughout TV Off, Kendrick is once again backed by the Dead Homies, both visually and spiritually. They're strategically placed right behind Kendrick. This not only calls back to the show's start, but also its exact midpoint beneath the streetlight and inside the Red X stage. This creates narrative symmetry in the show's overall structure, as the Dead Homies appear at the beginning, middle, and end.

Of course, DJ Mustard, the LA native who produced both TV Off and Not Like Us, gets his moment in the limelight, popping out during the iconic Mustard scream.

Now, the TV-off verse Kendrick performs seems like it was specifically written for the Super Bowl. There's a line about pass interference and penalty flags, both of which are football references. He cites plyometrics, which are explosive exercises athletes do. And he also alters a lyric toward the end of the verse where he changes the city just made it sweet, you die, I bet it to Super Bowl made a feat, you die, I bet it.

In the original line, Kendrick was saying his city or Compton is not a place where sweet or soft individuals survive. And you die I bet it is a homophone for diabetic, playing on the fact that sweets or sugar put diabetic people's lives at risk. The switch to "Super Bowl made of feet" marks Kendrick's defeat of this halftime show but maintains the diabetic wordplay, because feet are sometimes amputated due to diabetic complications.

This then culminates into the verse's final line, a line that was most certainly penned for this very performance: "Walk in New Orleans with the etiquette of L.A. Yellen Mustard." This is of course meta-commentary on how he brought Los Angeles culture to his performance here at New Orleans, but it also plays with the fact that the abbreviation for Louisiana is L.A.

This ties a perfect bow on the entire performance, which ends with a final iteration of the song's refrain: "Turn his TV off." Kendrick signals for the camera to follow him to the exact center of the center square before abruptly turning around, pointing a remote directly at the TV screen and turning it off. We then cut to the show's final shot, where Kendrick stands spotlighted in the center square, the entire game board taken over, and the words "Game Over" lit up in the stands.

As we discussed at the very start of our analysis, this final shot is a mirror image of the very first shot of the show. This is a film technique called bookending and the differences between the two images convey a snapshot of the entire storyline. Of course, the difference between these two shots is who's standing in the powerful center square, distilling the entire arc of the story into two images.

Kendrick has defeated Uncle Sam and beat the game. It's a brilliant final detail that, along with the use of the hero's journey story structure, proves the cinematic approach Kendrick and his team at PG Lang took in this performance. What should people expect to see and understand about Sunday's performance? Storytelling.

It's hard to imagine a better conceptual ending to this performance than "Turn Your TV Off" as the idea brilliantly resolves every level of the great American game embedded in this story. On a basic motivic level, turning the TV off works to tie a bow on the primary video game theme. Because what do you do when the game is over? You turn the TV off. As it applies to the rap game, competition and battle rap has been an essential part of hip hop since its inception.

And Kendrick just won the biggest battle in the genre's history, and did so more decisively than anyone else in history. He turned Drake's TV off, which if you didn't already know, is slang for murder. All that Big 3 talk is dead. Kendrick Lamar is the unanimous greatest rapper of his generation, and he has cemented himself on the shortlist contending for the greatest rapper of all time. This is simply a fact now.

We can turn our TV off because Kendrick has beat the rap game. Then there's Kendrick Amar playing the game of the Super Bowl halftime show, an American spectacle that comes with certain unspoken expectations and rules. Play the hits. Keep it light. Maybe show some American patriotism. In other words, give it broad appeal, which in America means wide appeal.

Yeah, Kendrick didn't do any of that. He decided instead to honor the history of hip-hop by showcasing its essence. He rapped over 2,000 words. He played two rap battle tracks. He even opened with an unreleased song. The setlist was intentionally designed to alienate part of the audience, because the criticism he knew would come was a real-time display of the story's central theme. Hence Uncle Sam voicing those objections in real time throughout the show.

And even when the performance did break into a more palatable section with SZA, it served a critical narrative purpose, both in unifying the masculine and feminine and duping Uncle Sam just before taking him out. Kendrick won the game of the halftime show because he didn't compromise his artistry. Because for Kendrick Lamar, compromising his artistry would have been an automatic loss. It would have meant conforming to the standards and expectations of Uncle Sam's white America.

Instead, as signified by the remote control in his hand at the end, Kendrick took control of his artistic destiny, gave a show on his terms, and honored the Black American art form that is hip-hop. In other words, he did a 13-minute crip walk at Wimbledon. And if you didn't like it, well, turn your TV off. This wasn't made for you.

And as we've talked about all episode, each level of the game from the basic video game motif, Drake in the rap game, Kendrick in the Super Bowl game, Sam Jacks, Serena and the game of American entertainment. All of these are symbols for the biggest game on display at the Super Bowl.

the heart of this entire story, the Black American experience throughout U.S. history. While it's obviously implied in every layer of the game, Kendrick specifically developed this theme by including the historical timeline of slave ships and slavery, the Great Migrations, mass incarceration, and the assassination of Black leaders. These are historical events that highlight the continued oppression and marginalization Black Americans have faced.

A reminder that the G-A-G, the Great American Game, is a gag. It's been rigged since the country's inception. Importantly though, just as central to the show as the oppression of Black Americans was Kendrick's celebration of the resilience, resourcefulness, joy, talent, intellect, and spirit of Black Americans.

Kendrick honored his ancestors by presenting himself as a reincarnated video game avatar empowered and protected by them. He used the game to unite his people, overthrow their oppressor, and take control of the game board. Kendrick used the old culture cheat code and beat the great American game. And to his community, to the us and not like us, Kendrick also ends by telling them to turn their TV off.

But what does that mean in this context? How does "turn your TV off" apply to the central level of the great American game? Well, I think this is where we have to return to what Kendrick said at the top of the show, where he stood on the GNX and declared: "The revolution bout to be televised, she picked the right time but the road got rough."

As a reminder, Kendrick here was playing off of Gil Scott Heron's famous 1970 poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a piece that asserts change will never be something you'll see on corporate-sponsored TV stations. That was about the fact that the first change that takes place in the universe, you have to change your mind before you change the way

Understanding Heron's message, how do we reconcile the fact that Kendrick starts his performance saying the revolution is about to be televised, but ends by saying turn your TV off? Well, like the show's opening and closing images, the first thing to do is acknowledge that this full circle connection is deliberate. The two statements are meant to display narrative and thematic progression.

Starting the show claiming revolution directly acknowledges its own revolutionary themes. However, ending the show calling to turn the TV off directly acknowledges its own limitations.

Kendrick Lamar is clearly smart enough to understand the inherent limitations of any piece of revolutionary-themed art, especially one that is ultimately sanctioned by the NFL and sponsored by America's biggest corporations. I mean, to understand these sanctions, look no further than the backup dancer who snuck in a Palestine-Sudan flag and was promptly tackled by security on live television.

More than anything in this show, this moment captures how real threats of revolution are treated by those in power. It's a real-time example of why the revolution will never be televised, will never be something you see presented with corporate sponsors. And so to me, Kendrick's final message to turn the TV off restores the original intent of the revolution will not be televised. Because what do you see when you turn the TV off?

A black screen. You see yourself. As Heron said, "Actual revolution starts in your mind and then influences your actions." And in this Super Bowl performance, Kendrick reminded his community of the old culture cheat code. He displayed the potential of unified resistance. He depicted the power of uncompromising authenticity. He reminded the world of the historic strength and resilience of his people across time.

However, Kendrick Lamar is not your savior. He's an avatar. And while great art can inspire and energize and articulate, it cannot and will never be able to do the work for you. And so this Super Bowl performance was not some naive promise of a better future. It was not a sunny kumbaya let's all come together moment. If it offers hope, it is only hope through subversion. It is hope through rebellious authenticity. Through the ruthless, defiant elimination of them.

So turn your TV off and go beat the fucking game.