Like many other young white boys discovering hip hop in the early 2010s, I love Kendrick Lamar. He first came on my radar with the release of his hit single, ‘Swimming Pools’, and I quickly ran through his discography. Not only his, but all of his cohorts at TDE. I could recite most of their albums front to back, but especially his. I’ve seen him live twice. First on tour with Mac Miller and Wiz Khalifa, later on tour with TDE as a whole, less Zay and SZA.
When it was announced that Kendrick was doing the Super Bowl, I was over the moon. I love his music, he’s great to see live, he’s performed on most big stages, and he’s won a Pulitzer prize. Why wouldn’t you be excited?
The big night came and went as quickly as the beef with Drake came to light, and the show grabbed my attention as much as the diss tracks released morning after morning.
Unfortunately, it was everything that I worried it would be.
With the exception of 3 songs, he performed music from his most recent album, ‘GNX’. Great for fans of Kendrick Lamar, but not great for the 133 million football fans tuned into the big game. SZA was the only other musical guest of the night, assisting with ‘luther’ from the new album and ‘All The Stars’ from the Black Panther album released in 2015.
As I hoped he would, Kendrick stuck to his newest music. I wanted to see his latest music and see what a show would look like, as I’m considering tickets for his tour later in the year. Much of the critiques point out that his show would have been better had he played his classics, and I agree. There are a lot of people who are not tapped into Kendrick and don’t know his songs, these are the people who share that opinion.
When performing live, I’ve noticed that a lot of what Kendrick Lamar says is lost to the music. Not only can you not understand him, he also can’t truly rap his songs. You can’t swear on television, so even his familiar songs lose their familiarity. When you don’t know the songs and the lyrics are severely broken up by nonsensical muffled English, you aren’t going to enjoy what you are watching.
Don’t get me wrong; as a fan of Kendrick, I enjoyed the show. A lot. I sat and watched in silence thinking about every piece of it, trying to give it my full attention. But with that said, it was not nearly as great as I was hoping it would be.