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Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show was a ten-song performance that turned a mass-audience music medley into a deliberately staged argument about America, entertainment and artistic control. Headlining the Apple Music-sponsored show in New Orleans on February 9, 2025, Lamar brought out SZA, used Samuel L. Jackson’s Uncle Sam character as his introduction, and placed his songs inside an unusually pointed visual frame. Calling it a “death blow” is a critical metaphor, not a measurable win over a named rival: the show’s force came from making spectacle itself part of the subject.
What Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl 2025 halftime show
The Associated Press reported a ten-song set, with five songs from Lamar’s 2024 album GNX. SZA joined him for two songs. The sequence moved between recent material, established hits and the pointedly situated “Not Like Us.”
| Order | Song | Set detail |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Squabble Up” | From GNX |
| 2 | “Humble” | |
| 3 | “DNA” | |
| 4 | “Euphoria” | From GNX |
| 5 | “Man at the Garden” | From GNX |
| 6 | “Peekaboo” | From GNX |
| 7 | “Luther” | Featuring SZA; from GNX |
| 8 | “All the Stars” | Featuring SZA |
| 9 | “Not Like Us” | |
| 10 | “TV Off” |
The album identifications and sequence follow the AP’s reported setlist; the AP describes half of the performance as coming from GNX. The NFL’s official full-performance video identifies SZA as featured in the show.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
![To Pimp A Butterfly [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51oy1vrsLWL._SL160_.jpg)
|
To Pimp A Butterfly [Explicit] | $10.91 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
|
DAMN. | $10.91 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
|
GNX | $12.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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|
good kid, m.A.A.d city [Deluxe 2 CD] [New Version] | $19.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
|
To Pimp a Butterfly - Good.Kid.M.A.A.D.City - Kendrick Lamar - 2 CD Bundling | $24.99 | Buy on Amazon |
Why the show felt like more than a medley
A national frame, not neutral decoration
Samuel L. Jackson appeared as Uncle Sam to introduce Lamar. Against the Super Bowl’s already patriotic setting, that character made the performance’s national imagery difficult to treat as simple pageantry. The Atlantic read the show as a self-conscious version of the “great American game,” with the Uncle Sam introduction and a tic-tac-toe stage design helping create tension between integrity and mass entertainment. That is a critic’s interpretation, not a hidden meaning viewers must accept; it is persuasive because the imagery gives the songs a frame rather than merely a backdrop.
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Lyrics and spectacle pulling in opposite directions
The set gave the broadcast the familiar momentum of hits and guest appearances, but it did not dissolve into a generic celebration. “Euphoria” and “Not Like Us” carry a confrontational charge in Lamar’s catalog, while the stage and Uncle Sam framing asked viewers to consider the performance as a composed public statement. The show’s tension lies in the coexistence: its songs can function as immediate entertainment and as material with a pointed context, without the staging settling every interpretation.
#1 Best Overall
Control at broadcast scale
A halftime show is built for scale: brief, highly visible, and required to hold attention across a huge live event. Lamar’s performance used that scale rather than pretending it was an intimate concert. The set design, character introduction and compressed song sequence shaped how the audience encountered the music. On that measure, the show’s polish was not in conflict with its edge; the polish was the means by which the edge reached the largest possible stage.
Does “death blow” fit?
As a review phrase, “death blow” works only if it describes the performance’s cultural force, not a literal or objectively settled triumph over another artist. The show did not need a scoreboard to make its case. Its achievement was to occupy an overwhelmingly mainstream platform while retaining friction: the spectacle was entertaining, but also visibly self-aware about the national theater around it.
Rank #2
The AP called Jackson’s Uncle Sam introduction a “powerful, commanding creative choice” in its February 10, 2025 review, and described the performance as a continued victory lap. The Atlantic, writing the same day, found the show “tough, tense—and quite satisfying.” Those assessments converge on a performance whose unease was part of its appeal. My reading is that Lamar made the halftime format carry two things at once: a tightly controlled hit-driven show and a challenge to regard the surrounding spectacle as innocent.
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The NFL provides an official full-performance video of the halftime show. Apple Music’s event page collects show-related listening material. Both are direct ways to revisit the performance and its music.
Quick Recap
Rank #4
Rank #3
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