Showdown full of symbolism: Trump in the front row at militant Super Bowl performance by Kendrick Lamar

In the Caesars Superdome Stadium in New Orleans it is peace in the Super Bowl. The final of the American football competition NFL, the American sports competition of the year, attracted nearly 120 million viewers on Sunday night. The Philadelphia Eagles team is 24-0 before. The chance that opponent Kansas City Chiefs will be the first team with three titles in a row – one Three-Peat – has decreased considerably.

It’s time for the most prestigious musical interlude from Mainstream America: The spectacularly designed half-time show of the Super Bowl where the largest pop stars in the country have been performing for years, from Michael Jackson and Madonna to Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé. Sunday night is Kendrick Lamar Headliner. A strong timing, because a week after the rapper has won the most prizes at the Grammy Awards. Donald Trump is the first sitting American president to attend the final. That is not the habit, partly due to the high security costs.

Trump in the Skybox

It is a showdown full of symbolism. On the field: Kendrick Lamar, who was the first pop artist ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, among other things for how rapper virtuoso makes the struggle and emotions tangible of people around him trying to build a life in the midst of structural racism, police weld, poverty and poverty and Crime – and from himself as a black man in a world -dominated world.

And high in his skybox: Donald Trump, the Bully in Chief who in his first term called on owners of American football clubs to dismiss players who, following Quarterback (game distributor) Kaepernick knelt on the field while playing the American folk song in protest against, among other things, racial inequality and anti-black police violence. At the start of his current term, Trump launched the ‘destroying’ of diversity policy as a political spearhead, and has already reversed several decisions and laws that would promote inclusion and diversity.

Loaded Show in advance

Lamars Show is already loaded in advance. For the kick -off of the final, the National Football League (NFL) announced that it has left the little to the imagination ‘End racism’slogan that hung on the field in the ‘end zone’ in recent years replaced by the more abstract cry ‘Choose Love’. The half-time show has been organized together with the company ROC Nation of Hiphopzabeheer Jay Z since 2019-an attempt from the NFL to create an more inclusive profile in the context of Black Lives Matter, and criticism of how the competition with protesting athletes deals with protesting profile .

Actor Samuel L. Jackson welcomes in full ‘Uncle Sam’ costume, including a top hat with Stars and Stripes, and with echoing show voice, the audience at “The Great American Game”. At the same time, Kendrick Lamar, squatting on the hood of a Buick from the 80s, starts a fragment Bodies To rap, first murmur and slowly increasing the energy. “The Revolution is about to be television“He decides. “You picked the right time but the wrong guy.“Samuel L. Jackson (” Uncle Sam “) protests:” No, no, no! Too loud! Too reckless! Too ghetto!“

Black dancers in white, red and blue costumes form the American flag on the field. It is, precisely on this stage and for this audience, a militant statement. Who is the flag? Who do you think this country exists? Who has paid the heaviest price historically for that ‘great America’ of Trump?

In a thirteen-minute and infectious energetic concert, and always surrounded by a particularly powerful group choreography (‘Uncle Sam’: “I see that you have taken your homeboys”), Lamar strongly combines the traditional bombastic spectacle of the half-time show With its energetic and penetrating, layered texts and symbolism, in classics such as “DNA.” And “Humble.” And is assisted by singer SZA, with whom he plays the more subdued duets ‘Luther’ and ‘All the Stars’. ‘Uncle Sam’ likes that. “This is what America loves,” says Jackson. “Nice and calm.”

The track

Then it’s time for the track. The hard-hard Grammy winner ‘Not Like Us’ with which Kendrick Lamar decided his battle with rival Drake destructive in his favor last year. Tennis Great Serena Williams, just like Lamar from Compton, Los Angeles, does the Crip Walk on stage-a dance pass with which members of the Crips-Gang traditionally with fast footwork the letters Crip Spellen. The audience shouts it after one punchline With which Lamar Drake puts down as a pedophile. The dancers in red, white and blue costumes are now motionless and angular on the floor.

For those who afterwards, as Lamar grinning, recommended in his final song ‘TV OFF’, indeed turned off the television: the Kansas City Chiefs were unable to write football history. They lost the final with 40-22.

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