When Black Americans are successful, the voice of America -Uncle Sam- has always been there to make up baseless excuses for why they don’t deserve it or don’t belong there. At the 2025 Superbowl Halftime Show, Kendrick Lamar called this out.
“Did it with integrity. These boys try and hate on me … Do you want the dangerous me or the famous me? … I deserve it all because it’s mine. Tell me why you think you deserve the greatest of all time,” remarked Lamar during “man at the garden.”
Unfortunately, he was proven right. On the halftime show, Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo said, “It was hard to make out what was actually being said. Kendrick Lamar’s 12 minutes of rap was basically a musical grudge match … on the biggest stage in America. And most people don’t care … The music itself is not broad enough, or well-known enough, to reach generations … Let’s have a country night. Let’s put Carrie Underwood, Reba and Morgan Wallen- Let them have a go at it.”
Ironically, Lamar’s “musical grudge match” rap won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 and a total of 22 Grammys, while the supposedly more well-known artists Arroyo suggested have half the amount of Grammys combined. As Lamar said, “You can’t fake influence.”
“This Great American Game”
In the opening set of the show, light flashes between four symbols on the field: a triangle, a circle, a square and the letter x. Many viewers recognized these symbols as an ubiquitous icon of American culture: the four main buttons on a PlayStation controller.
Immediately after, Samuel L. Jackson introduces himself as Uncle Sam and proclaims, “This is the great American game!” But what is this game that both Lamar and Jackson are referencing? It goes beyond the Super Bowl–which, literally speaking, is an American game–and refers to the game of being Black in America.
Lamar uses his performance to argue that the government boxes in and suppresses Black people. After performing two songs, Uncle Sam reprimands Lamar for being “too loud, too reckless, too…ghetto.” He said, “Do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up!”
Uncle Sam’s dialogue highlights how many Americans feel about Black voices and Lamar’s halftime show. In 2015, after Kendrick Lamar performed at the BET Awards, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years.” Kid Rock said on air during Feb. 14’s edition of “Real Time with Bill Maher” that Lamar’s halftime show was “the epitome of DEI blowing up.”
Just like how he refuted Rivera’s comments, explaining that his song “Alright” was a hopeful song that critics managed to turn into a song about hate, Lamar subverts Uncle Sam’s comments about being “too ghetto.” Instead of conforming, he defies Uncle Sam.
Lamar keeps Black culture at the forefront for this next part of his performance. Uncle Sam called him too reckless, so he cheekily performs his hit 2017 song “Humble” amidst a sea of all-Black dancers clad in American flag colors raising their fists and then marching like they’re in a chain gang, solemnly celebrating how Black people have contributed to America while reminding us about our horrific past.
But we’re once again reminded he’s still in a game when he transitions from “DNA” into the diss-track “euphoria,” as lights in the stands spell out, “WARNING WRONG WAY.” Lamar has not been playing the game by its rules, and as a consequence, Uncle Sam gravely stares into the camera and tells the scorekeeper to deduct one life.
This is Lamar’s way of saying that when the government doesn’t like how Black people are acting, they’ll punish them. It happened with slavery, redlining and segregation. It happened with Black Wall Street, Watts and Tuskegee. It happened to Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, George Floyd, Jacob Blake and countless others.
After one of Lamar’s lives is deducted, he launches into “peekaboo.” The camera pans to several groups of dancers, dressed in all white and moving in unison. Given the outfits, the song’s title, and the commentary already in the show, it’s possible that this is in reference to the Ku Klux Klan and the concept of ‘AmeriKKKa’ which refers to the government’s white supremacy. President Donald Trump’s seeming 2020 endorsement of the Proud Boys and face of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk’s questionable salute in January gives these ideas some weight.
Lamar relaxes his onslaught and brings out SZA to perform their hits “luther” and “All the Stars.” In this section, Lamar is a little more subdued in his performance. During “All the Stars,” the dancers circle the stage he’s on, almost like they’re prisoners.
Uncle Sam lets us know that this is the type of performance America wants to see: nice and calm, fitting in with the crowd, certainly not making a statement (even though this is of course all one huge statement). But, before Uncle Sam can finish telling Lamar not to mess it all up, he cuts him off with the opening notes of “Not Like Us.”
While the anthem is famously another diss towards Drake, Lamar turned the song’s meaning on its head and aimed it at the government. The song’s ethos is how Drake is inauthentic and rides trends, simply using rappers from America to make himself seem like he fits in. He is saying that there is a divide between Lamar’s culture and Drake’s culture that simply can’t be crossed.
Similarly, in his performance, Lamar has been demonstrating the rift between Black America and the government. During his performance of “Humble,” he stood in the middle of a divided American flag made up of dancers. Multiple times, Uncle Sam had chastised Lamar for being himself. By performing “Not Like Us,” Lamar is not just dancing on Drake’s grave, but emphatically stating that there is a separation between Black Americans and a government that doesn’t understand them and only seeks to exploit them and their culture.
Earlier in the show, Lamar had stated, “The revolution’s about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” The line is in reference to the 1971 poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron. While the poem argues that the media ignores racism, here, Lamar is telling us that he is staging a revolution, and you are going to watch. Why? Because, “You can’t fake influence.”
This plays into the show’s finale, where Lamar performs his hit song “tv off.”
Lamar repeats the phrase, “Turn his tv off/turn his tv off,” before smiling at the camera as the lights turn off in the stadium. The words “GAME OVER” are projected onto the stands.
This ties directly into Lamar’s theme of a televised revolution. Lamar openly criticized the government. They weren’t able to silence him or prevent his revolution. When the words “GAME OVER” appear, it’s his way of saying he’s done playing America’s game. He’s won. He can’t be contained. He’s also encouraging people to stop playing along with the government’s game. People can’t let the media dictate narratives around racism. He’s telling people to shut off their TV, and go think for themselves.
“Uncle Sam”-uel L. Jackson
The decision to have Samuel L. Jackson play the physical manifestation of America could very well be explained by his anti-establishment and Black power past. He was precisely what “Uncle Sam” warned against. He fought most of his life for a better version of America that has yet to be actualized.
Jackson was attending Morehouse College when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968 and was an usher at his funeral. This tragic event prompted him to get involved in protests, including a radical demonstration where he and a group of classmates held the Board of Trustees hostage with demands for black education and student involvement in governance.
After college, Jackson joined the Black Power movement and purchased firearms in preparation for some sort of armed struggle until the FBI recommended he flee to California before he got killed. He observed firsthand that when black folks gather to liberate themselves, it can be a death sentence, hence Uncle Sam’s eerie message after “man at the garden.”
“I see you brought your homeboys with you- The ol’ culture cheat code. Scorekeeper, deduct one life,” he said.
“40 Acres and a Mule”
Before performing his five-time Grammy award-winning diss track against Drake, “Not Like Us”, Lamar stated, “It’s a cultural divide, I’mma get it on the floor. Forty acres and a mule- This is bigger than the music.”
This was his most anticipated song of the night, but he directed the audience’s attention to this “forty acres and a mule”- this concept that is bigger than the music and more of a cultural divide than a diss track.
On Jan. 16, 1865, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued to redistribute 400,000 acres of seized Confederate land to the black Americans who were previously enslaved. Up to 40 acres of protected, arable land would be given to each family, on which they would have an increased opportunity to accrue intergenerational wealth.
These reparations were followed through on- for less than a year. At least 1,250 received their land only to have it taken away when President Andrew Johnson entered office and continuously limited who was eligible for land until it was all given back to the slave owners.
Lamar’s mention of the reparation attempt squandered by President Johnson is meant to hold a mirror to Trump’s systematic destruction of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the country since his inauguration. Lamar made it clear that past promises will not be forgotten.
