Never meet your idols, you’ll only be disappointed.
“The revolution ‘bout to be televised, you picked the right guy but the wrong time.”
Kendrick Lamar
Last week, after reading The Athletic reporting on the NFL decision to remove “End Racism” signs from the end zones during the Super Bowl, I declared that Kendrick Lamar better make a statement considering *vaguely gesturing around* all the chaos and evil unfolding all around us. It may not have been fair to Kendrick, but considering that the very same The Athletic thought that it was appropriate to state that NFL diversity is a work in progress without even a mention of their own earlier reporting, and allowing an avalanche of disgusting racist and misogynistic comments to the article. In addition to the critical importance of his performance from a political perspective, Kendrick also faced mounting expectations to deliver the “Flawless Victory” over Drake and the colonizers he represents in the perhaps biggest stage of them all.
To his credit, Kendrick not only rose to the moment, he exceeded all of my expectations to a point of having a day long guilt trip for even doubting the MC in the first place.
Although one of the dance performers almost stole the stage with an incredibly courageous stand for Gaza and Sudan, the message from Kendrick was very clear.
There is no way for me to fully understand the message that Kendrick’s performance delivered last night. I may not be white, but I will never have the innate understanding of what it means to be a Black person in America. The display of the American flag literally built from the backs of the Black people, visually torn in half with distinctly Black music protesting the whiteness of the fascism around us was, as Nikole Hannah-Jones immediately pointed out on BlueSky, an incredibly subversive statement. It was also a bigger diss track than Not Like Us1.
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Entirely too many people and publications are way too white to recognize what was being communicated and why. Samuel L. Jackson’s Uncle Sam, channeling a bit of a Candyland vibe, mockingly attempted to “control” the performance but as much as I wanted to hear Alright2, Kendrick, who by the way has won not only Grammys but also a Pulitzer Prize, masterfully juxtaposed the American flag against the backdrop of Humble followed by DNA.
As Will Bunch notes, “This is America, 2025: In one weekend (!!), one New York Times photographer, Doug Mills, travels from Gitmo to the Super Bowl to take two unforgettable images of where we're at as a nation.”
Au contraire, Kendrick was perfect for the moment. I read somewhere that no one hates like Kendrick Lamar, ostensibly in lieu of the diss tracks against Drake. Well give the man the very first Nobel Hate Prize award as last night was the best diss track against the white America.
The response from the white male dominated far right was of course expected and it is reminiscent of Grant’s warning: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other."
The patriotism and intelligence was front and center during Kendrick’s performance. David Dennis Jr. writes:
Yes, Drake is a colonizer according to Lamar, but it’s not just about that. It’s about getting rid of all colonizers. So when Lamar dropped his most powerful easter egg of the performance — Serena Williams — it was a wink to a particularly Black audience.
Williams has been the target of Drake and America at multiple times in her career. She’s been unfairly targeted for daring to be great, or, in Drake’s case, disinterested in a relationship. During the performance of “Not Like Us,” Williams danced on the field — a middle finger to Drake and timely reminder that Lamar defended her, and the culture, on the song. But if you recall, back in the 2012 Olympics, Williams celebrated her Gold medal by c-walking on the court. The move, an homage to her Compton roots and something Black folks had been doing for ages, became another opening for attack as far too many people accused her of being “ghetto” and too cocky for daring to shout out her hometown and rejoice in victory.
One should not need to be Black to understand how deeply meaningful Serena’s c-walk really was. On the other hand, I admit to missing the most impactful, both visually and emotionally, exposition of the entire show: as Chad Loder points out, Kendrick made sure to drive the point home by recreating the Danziger Bridge shooting during Hurricane Katrina which happened in New Orleans.
Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show was a masterclass in storytelling—and shade. In September, when the halftime show was first announced, Kendrick said, “Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date. And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They got the right one.” In the end, he was right the first time, he was the perfect guy, at the right time in the right moment: the revolution was televised last night and millions of us have seen it.
If I had Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam narrating my writing, he’d probably say right about now, “MFer, seems that you are putting Kendrick on the proverbial pedestal, making an idol out of him.”
He would not be wrong.
“Idols consume you as your pursue them, disappoint you when you get them, and devastate you when you lose them.”
Tim Keller
One of the most challenging aspects of becoming an adult is the moment when you experience a complete betrayal by one of your idols. The other night, I was speaking with my Much Better Half, and she was absolutely right when she said that in her twenties she learned to stop putting people on pedestals and idolizing them. Their work, be it literature or music or sculpture or whatnot, is what impacts us, what helps us develop ourselves, our minds, and our understanding of the world. It is not easy but it is best to separate people from what they produce for the world, as quite often people will end up disappointing you.
The reason we had that specific conversation was the recent meltdown by Kanye West3 over multiple social media platforms ranting about Hitler, Sean Diddy Combs, and much, much more4. For our son, who is a musician in his own right, and a hopeful future music producer, Kanye had always been the artist to idolize. All of the recent events and revelations, obviously, have hit the kid hard. I can easily understand, sympathize and empathize.
My first time being devastated by the complete fall from grace of an idol happened at about the same age as my son. Growing up during the implosion of the Soviet empire at the proverbial epicenter of the protest music, St. Petersburg, my teenage self quickly created idols from a number of early Russian punk and rock stars. One of these idols was Konstantin Kinchev, lead singer for the band Alisa. I was not the only young and impressionable mind that was aroused by the revolutionary rhetoric of the generation. It would take decades for me to fully understand that even the so-called “good guys” were still projecting the weight of the Russian colonial empire. Unlike many other Russian rock bands of that period, Alisa’s lyrics started to promote the Russian ethnostate as early as 1991.
It was not just heartbreaking and mind boggling for a 16 year old me to realize that one of my idols just may be a Nazi. It was practically the end of the world as I’ve known it. If one of the faces of my generation’s revolution could be a traitor to the cause, my teenage mind reasoned, how could I trust any one else? How can I trust in “Changes” or believe in a better future? I still listened to the songs I grew up with for almost a decade but it was more of a nostalgia filled with guilt growing to the point where at the turn of the century I simply stopped.
Unlike my spouse, though, I did not learn my lesson in my twenties. At the turn of the millennia, after the euphoria, no pun intended, of watching the In the Flesh tour two rows away from the stage, I suffered the devastation once again when Roger Waters revealed his real self with such openly pro-Russian and antisemitic turn. By that time, he was significantly more impactful and important to twentysomething year old me than Kinchev ever was. I was no longer Amused to Death, I was simply desolate.
It took years for me to really get over these “betrayals” and exorcise the demons from my mind and my heart. On the cerebral level, as I wrote a couple paragraphs earlier, my spouse is absolutely correct, we should never idolize artists (or celebrities) as they eventually bound to disappoint us… to devastate us. Yet, watching Kendrick last night, it was impossible for me on the emotional level to not reach deep into the past and place the Compton star on another pedestal.
Kendrick is also another of our son’s idols. While we watched the half-time show, our son repeatedly begged us to stop with all the politics as he wanted to enjoy the moment, the music, the experience.
Alas, the moment was so politically charged that here I am writing this knowing that he may read it as a subscriber to this newsletter and feel that my words are in the vernacular of younger generations, cringe. The over-protective fatherly instinct is to protect your child at all costs no matter what because there is nothing worse than watching your child disappointed or worse, hurt. As such, part of me wants to temper the teenage expectations and protect from the disappointments that I have experienced myself.
I realize how short-sighted that is.
He knows how to separate the music from the artist. Especially in case of Kendrick Lamar, and the 2nd greatest Super Bowl half time performance5 and what’s more, he has us, his parents, whenever he may need us.
This is considering that Not Like Us quickly usurped the throne of the greatest diss track from Hit ‘Em Up (or No Vaseline, both equally deserving of the prior honor).
Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance is projected by Fox to be the most-watched halftime performance in Super Bowl history. Expected to top 130 million viewers for the performance when the final numbers comes out.
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