Hello everybody. Welcome to 2025
Welcome to the rabbit hole. Today, we’re going to talk about the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, and the four kinds of reactions that everybody is getting. This video is for one of those groups. Everyone else is welcome, but this is specifically for one group of people.
The Halftime Show
Group #1
Group one loved it. People who knew the music or discovered the music fell in love with it. They were thrilled with it. They were wrapping along with it at home. They were putting reactions up on all the socials, saying, “Oh, my God, that was perfect”. “That was amazing”. Those folks, you are 100% welcome to be in this video, but nothing in this video will be new to you. So please hang out and give me commentary if I get something wrong.
Group #2
Number two, these are the people who hated it. These are the people who not just not my thing but absolutely hated it and are screaming bloody murder on all the socials right now about how, Oh, I couldn’t understand it, and it wasn’t music, and I can’t follow it, and how dare it do that?
And there are people absolutely losing their blood pressure spiking; they’re losing it completely over the fact that there is something happening that they had trouble following or understanding or didn’t have the context for. And it’s not like some of those metaphors were entirely subtle.
Some of them were not subtle at all. So, if you didn’t get the message, you were trying not to get the message. But for those who hated it, this is not a video for you. If you want to hate-watch, by all means, contribute to the algorithm. You’re welcome. Thank you.
Group #3
Number three, those are the people, not their thing, bored, turned it off, didn’t care, apathetic, not your thing. They’re not watching this video anyway. They’re not reading the blog post about this. They’re not even here. It doesn’t matter.
Group #4
Number four, these are the people this video is for. These are the folks that are like me, the ones who watched it and were like, Okay, what’s going on there? I don’t think I’m following that. I can’t understand that, or maybe I can’t hear that part. People who are like this, what is this, and why? You know, some of it is really obvious, but there are layers to this. And once you start looking into it, there’s layers upon layers upon layers.
It is a parfait of just amazing detail. So I want to welcome you to the rabbit hole that I went to when I was on this journey.
The Rabbit Hole
Here we go. A story that gets us here. My son is an 18-year-old who is musically savvy, and this is one of his things. He likes hip-hop. He likes Kendrick Lamar, and he introduced me to some of his stuff, and when I listened to it, I couldn’t understand any of it. I couldn’t follow it. It was too fast for me. I couldn’t parse any of the details, and I felt stupid.
But because it’s my kid, I was like, Well, I want to be connected to what he’s interested in and what he knows, so I’m going to go doing some digging. So I did what I do, and I started going down the rabbit hole on YouTube and finding out information.
Now, I am not giving you the full soup-to-nuts history of what that show was, because that is a two-hour video by people who have far more background and knowledge in this than I do. I am giving you a little appetizer introduction to this concept. So one of the things I did is I started looking around and going, Okay, who is this guy? I don’t really understand his stuff, but who is he?
2018 Pulitzer for DAMN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9wPxY-LUwE
And I found out he’s got a Pulitzer, and I’m enough of a snob that I went, “How did he get a Pulitzer for rap song”? And I started looking at it, which is where first area and where my fish bowl privilege absolutely was blinding me to what was going on with that. So what I want to do is share and I’m going to share my screen.
Okay, this is Digging The Greats. “Why Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer for Damn”. It is fantastic. It is wonderful. If you really, really want to get to know, go to YouTube and check this out.
I will put the link in the description and in the comments on the different socials. And then there is also different articles out there on how Kendrick earned a Pulitzer Prize when he became the first nonclassical or jazz artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for music, 2018 it took to 2018 for this to happen. So that definitely got me I was like, “Okay, I’m clearly missing things here”. So I started digging in, and I came across two different places where I want to play some clips for you today.
Josh Johnson – Drake vs Kendrick Explained to White People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3uWj2MpydI
The first is a comedian named Josh Johnson, who is just a sweet, wonderful guy who does this very, very friendly, very warm, embracing kind of comedy. His timing is impeccable. We’ll be talking about him in later videos because his stagecraft is superb. However, what I want to share with you right now is particular video.
Josh does really, really detailed descriptions in his stand up, and he brings you on these stories. And it’s a nice, gentle like he takes you on the storytelling journey with him beautifully. And I can strongly recommend that video. It was my introduction to this particular topic of this rap beef and what the history is behind it, and it helped me find where I was headed. Plus, he’s really funny.
Knox Hill – Rapper Reacts to Kendrick Lamar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-faVA9dx6Q&t=1868s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Datzdb-1cW8&t=465s
Then there is this guy. Now, what I want is to find the first one here. So this is Knox Hill. He’s a rapper, but he is also a YouTube reactor. He does really good breakdowns. So let me play a little bit of this. Okay, it’s really hard to find clips reviewing that song that I can share on YouTube,
but it’s 100% worth watching. Definitely go to Knox Hills channel and check out his stuff. He does amazing breakdowns.
Kendrick Pop-Out Concert June 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i8UP8b8tuI
Now, when if you did watch that halftime show, one of the things you might not have been aware of is the number of people; if you weren’t there in the audience, and I wasn’t there in the audience, the number of people in that space that knew all of the lines, knew every single different song he combined together, knew what they meant, and could follow along. When I started going down this rabbit hole, Kendrick had the pop-out concert, which I’m going to play a little clip of, and I want you to just watch the mastery of stagecraft that this is, and think about what it means. So let’s go in right here, just a couple of seconds of this.
All right, so he’s starting the song again. He played it multiple times, and when I watched it, I was actually yelling at the screen, going, “He’s already dead. Stop. You’ve killed him. Drake’s already dead”. But he had the crowd doing this. Watch what he does. He’s got the confidence as a performer. He’s got the stage mastery that he can let them do this, and they know every single line in the entire group, the entire auditorium, was doing all of the lyrics. They know it cold, and he did it multiple times.
The Super Bowl
So that’s what was happening at the Super Bowl, which might not have come across on the TV, but there, there was a moment in that show where he’s did a line, but the entire space did it with him, and it’s one of the lines that calls Drake out for being inappropriate with kids, which is not something I’m sure Drake wanted on a international stage like that, which is why this was such a big deal.
So again, four different groups of people reacting to this, four different groups of people giving their thoughts on this. But if you are one of the groups that was like, I can’t quite understand it, I’m gonna put these links in. And I would really welcome you to just go down this little rabbit hole, explore some of this stuff, and discover some of the layers on these things.
As somebody who was a complete novice outsider to this, I didn’t realize not only the technical complexity. I had a sense of that, but I didn’t really realize the musicality, the layering of it, the meaning of it, but the details, and especially really good reactors, really good breakdowns, will give you that not only the initial layer but the secondary layer, the Easter eggs, all the little call outs.
The way Kendrick moves in the world is some of the most incredibly detailed, deeply thought-through movement, communication, speech, body language, dance, costuming, all of it.
What he did at the Super Bowl was a very specific storytelling event, and it had a lot in it, a lot of very meaningful things in it, a lot of culturally powerful things in it. But it also is a master class in technical artistry. So, if it’s not your thing and you’re willing to go exploring it, follow some of these links and tell me what you think because this is one of these pieces that I’ve been wanting to talk about, my introduction to Kendrick’s work, for a while.
And as soon as the Super Bowl happened, and the next day I saw all these reactions, I was like, Well, it’s time for me to make that video. There are a lot of places to get information, and some of them will be very, very, very detailed. So follow whatever threads you want because you can get an entire PhD education on this stuff.
Just be open to the fact that there are layers upon layers upon layers of meaning, not just one. It’s not surface-level. There’s the surface, there’s the sub, and then there’s all the other stuff. So follow along, the different reactors and the different, you know, videos and explanations and treatises or white papers or whatever floats your boat that can give you more information about this to the degree that you want to.
Because it is a world 100% worth exploring, and I wanted to welcome you as someone who I didn’t grow up with it, and now I’m fascinated, and I hope more people take the time, more people who are in some discomfort, because it’s alienating seeing something that you don’t understand and can’t follow, but exploring it is so worth doing.
And for those of you who are if you are watching this and you’re like, “No, I hated it”. Yeah, fine. It’s not for you. Well, it is for you, but you’re not willing to listen. So be mad about it, if that’s what makes you happy, but there’s a lot there. And if you could get over yourself long enough to actually pay attention to what was being said and why, there is a wealth of information there.
There’s a wealth of experience and gems there. It’s 100% worth doing.
And I hope that people will comment, come to my YouTube channel, come to the different socials, and, you know, give me feedback.
Tell me what I got wrong, tell me what I missed, and if you hated it, and you want to tell me you hated it, that’s fine. I’m going to think less of you for it, but if you want me to think less of you, then by all means, come join the rest of us.
I’ll see you in the next one.