Kendrick Lamar’s success leads to Super Bowl

New Orleans, LA (News4usonline) – Kendrick Lamar does not need an introduction. He is what he is. And he is one of the most popular musical artists worldwide. The man has won 17 Grammys. He has even added a Pulitzer Prize to his awards collection. 

And now Lamar is the featured halftime performer at Super Bowl LIX. The clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles seems almost like background music to Lamar’s highly-anticipated performance. 

 It could be because his smash hit “Not Like Us” just happens to be the hottest track in 2024. 

“Not Like Us” is considered by many to be the top diss songs of all-time, at least be placed alongside Ice Cube’s “ No Vaseline,” which was aimed at his former colleagues in the group N,W,A. Lamar may have taken diss to another level with his public blast-out of Canadian rapper Drake in “Not Like Us.” 

The hype every year for the artist performing during the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show gets amped up a little bit more. Last year, Usher brought his bag of hit songs to Las Vegas. In 2023, Rihanna was the star of the show. 

And the year before in Los Angeles (Inglewood) Dr. Dre, the lead collaborator of the halftime show, turned the production into one of the most masterful performances ever with Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, and Eminem serving as co-stars in the show. Lamar was also part of that incredible performance. 

So now, the ante for this year’s show just went up a couple of notches with the entire world looking on and judging the performance.

 Lamar, who sat for a short, carefully moderated press conference during Super Bowl LIX week at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, provided some insight to what he’s thinking about. That includes the show itself, the culture, hip-hop, and his work as an artist.

“It’s just a continuum of who I am, really,” Lamar said. “I’ve always been to myself. I’ve always been in my own bubble, whether it’s with the fam[ily]  or whether it’s training. I don’t process it all…it’s just I continue to do what I was doing  ten years ago, and that’s like be better than myself, better than the craft and not look at it as bright lights…It always worked for me, even when I was younger, playing sports or being in the forefront of presentations and stuff like that. I was like I got to look at myself in the mirror rather than look at the crowd, fame or attention.”

Sunday can’t come soon enough. #SBLIX #AppleMusicHalftime https://t.co/VxWPUamYKp pic.twitter.com/s7cVbVRHEi

— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) February 7, 2025

As far as being able to perform in the Super Bowl, Lamar added that was the furthest thing on his mind when he started off on his prolific journey as music’s most iconic and revered voices, 

“We were thinking about the best verses, how we were going to split this five dollars at Church’s Chicken or something like that. It wasn’t no Super Bowl, going to the studio and getting a meal,” Lamar stated. 

“I think or what or what I know is the passion I have now is still the passion I had then,” Lamar went on to say. “And I think that carried on to the Super Bowl. It was all about being present. As long as I was present in the studio and present in whatever that vibe was or whatever that mistake was, rapping or doing the hooks or courses or whatnot, I was present in that moment. I felt like that passion. I think that being present and not actually foreseeing everything kept me in a founded state of mind.”