Kendrick Lamar will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show next February in New Orleans, the National Football League, Roc Nation and Apple Music announced on Sunday. It is the second time that the rapper, from Compton, Calif., will take part in the event, but will be his first as the headline act.
The booking comes amid a busy year for the rapper. Earlier this spring, Lamar and Drake traded bars in a high-profile beef, which resulted in Lamar’s hit song “Not Like Us.”
“Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date,” Lamar said in a statement. “And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They got the right one.”
The league announced Lamar as the performer after the rapper posted a short video on social media set on a football field with a giant American flag as a backdrop during the opening Sunday of its season, when the majority of its teams will play their games.
Lamar last performed on the Super Bowl stage in 2022, as part of the event’s first showcase for hip-hop music, led by the West Coast superstars Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, as well as Eminem, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige.
“Kendrick Lamar is truly a once-in-a-generation artist and performer,” Jay-Z, the founder of Roc Nation, said in a statement. “His deep love for hip-hop and culture informs his artistic vision. He has an unparalleled ability to define and influence culture globally. Kendrick’s work transcends music, and his impact will be felt for years to come.”
Lamar, a 17-time Grammy-winning artist, catapulted to fame after the release of his second album, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” in 2012. Widely recognized as a talented lyricist, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his album “DAMN.” and was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 for “All the Stars,” his song with SZA from the “Black Panther” soundtrack.
He made headlines this year thanks to his highly publicized feud with Drake, which began with his feature on Future and Metro Boomin’s song “Like That” in March. Drake soon responded, leading to a back-and-forth of songs laced with personal attacks and sharp accusations. “Not Like Us,” which was released in May, became his fourth No. 1 single and has remained on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 17 weeks.
Lamar took a victory lap at a Juneteenth concert at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where he played “Not Like Us” multiple times. The event, broadcast on Amazon Prime Video, was viewed as a uniting moment for Los Angeles, featuring local heroes including Dr. Dre.
Lamar’s Super Bowl appearance will be the sixth halftime produced in collaboration with Roc Nation. In 2019, Jay-Z’s company signed a deal with the N.F.L. that made him a co-producer of the Super Bowl halftime show and a promoter of the league’s social justice initiatives. The agreement came amid tensions over the league’s handling of protests by the quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who had begun kneeling during the national anthem during the 2016 season to protest police violence against people of color.
In 2020, Jay-Z told The New York Times that he had been approached to play halftime with contingencies — that Rihanna and Kanye West should perform “Run This Town” with him — and turned the offer down. “The problem with the N.F.L. is you all think hip-hop is still a fad when hip-hop has been the dominant music form around the world for 20 years,” Jay-Z said he told Robert K. Kraft, the New England Patriots owner and chairman of the N.F.L.’s media committee, who had reached out to him.
The first halftime show of the Roc Nation era was co-headlined by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira; in 2021, the Weeknd took the stage solo. Following the historic (and belated) full arrival of hip-hop on the Super Bowl stage, Rihanna performed in 2023, and last year Usher anchored the show with a slate of guests including Alicia Keys, Lil Jon and Ludacris.
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