Why Kendrick Lamar doesn’t get paid for the Super Bowl -Half -Time Show

Fejding with Drake made ‘Not Like Us’ practitioner the hip -hop hottest artist. Now he takes the music’s biggest scene in New Orleans – for free.

_{By Matt CraigForbes staff}

T.He effects of last summer’s rap -fej Between Kendrick Lamar and Drake continues to return through the music industry and career for its two conflicting. This month, Drake headlines came to bring a defamation case against the Universal Music Group for his role in back and forth, while Lamar is preparing for the biggest concert in his life to pour at the break on the Super Bowl Lix on February 9.

It’s hard to imagine how the 37-year-old Lamar, who has been seen as a critical treasure in much of his career with a cult-like afterwards, would have been chosen by the break show-performing producer Jay-Z and his Roc Nation For music’s biggest scene, it wasn’t for the beef and the series with dissent it produced. “Not like us,” Lamars Anthemic-removal of hip-hop’s best-selling artist, hit more than a billion streams on Spotify in 2024 and spent a record 21 consecutive weeks on top of Billboards Hot Rap Songs diagram.

“The feud between him and Drake made him bigger; No one can sit here and claim it, “says Antwan” Amadeus “Thompson Sr., a multi-platin music producer. “But (Super Bowl) goes to Catapult (Lamar’s) career to a completely different level. And I think it is very important that artists benefit from this because all eyes will be on him. “

The exposure given to half -time athletes playing in front of more than 80,000 fans inside New Orleans’ Superdome and more than 100 million across the country on TV is the reason why the Super Bowl is considered the most prestigious concert on the music calendar.

Each artist on the planet wants to take that scene, even if it means to act for free.

And that’s exactly what they are asked to do. As has been custom for half -time headlines for many years, Lamar is not paid for his 12 to 14 minutes of performance, except for the insignificant trade union minimum. (Last year’s headliner, Usher, allegedly received $ 671.)

NFL and half -time presenting sponsor Apple Music covers the cost of production, which for many years extends to more than $ 10 million for sets that last no longer than 15 minutes. Some recent artists have chosen to pay millions more from their own pockets to maximize the Super Bowl show.

Tradeoff is worth it. After last year’s show, Usher allegedly received a 550% unevenness in the overall Spotify streams, similar to what other artists have experienced in recent years. Rihanna, Headliner in 2023, Snow in a plug for her Fenty Beauty brand under her set worth estimating $ 44 million in earned media.

Like many half-time athletes in front of him, Lamar will ride the Super Bowl-Stuck on a 19-stop stadium tour over North America this summer with SZA, which has already been announced as a guest star for the break. The couple has two songs together, “Luther” and “Gloria” on Lamar’s new album, GNXAs he surprises in December. In addition, a movie produced by Lamar and South Park Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are ready to debut in July, distributed by Paramount.

It all represents an important step-up for Lamar, a member of Forbes 30 under 30 class in 2014, who has won 17 Grammy Awards, but never the headline Stadium-size shows before. His first taste came in 2022, when he got a two-minute place under the Super Bowl LIV LIFE TIME TIME PERFORMANCE LED BY DR. Dre and Snoop Dogg, seen as a departure of the torch in West Coast Rap.

Because Lamar is so closely identified with his hometown of Los Angeles, it was a curious choice to be chosen for this year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans. Since Jay-Z took on his role in producing the break in 2019, headlining artists have become younger, more different and more closely linked to the game’s host city. The obvious geographical choice in this case would have been New Orleans Native and Multi-Platin Artist Lil Wayne.

“If I were Jay-Z, I would definitely have been with Lil Wayne,” says Thompson. He still believes that a special guest performance in the show is possible, but unlikely, partly because of Wayne’s allegiance to Drake, which Wayne first discovered and signed for his young money brand in 2008.

Still, Thompson admits that Lamar is undoubtedly “the hottest artist in hip-hop” right now, and in the wake of the destruction left in January’s fireplace in Los Angeles, his choice is suddenly more important. One of the things fans admire about Lamar is that he is rapping about and advocating material questions as to whether it is mental health or uniting the gangs of Los Angeles. Lamar’s music has a level of meaning and depth that is rare to see from a scene as big as the Super Bowl.

“He has been the one who takes stops in difficult times and talk about things that a lot of artists would not touch,” says Thompson.

Jasmine Young, who serves as director of Warner Music/Blavatnik Music Center at Howard University and previously worked with marketing campaigns at DEF Jam Records, agrees that the Super Bowl will increase Lamar’s career, but adds that NFL is also taking advantage of his cultural resonance as much as he will benefit from its massive global audience.

“Today, people use hip-hop to sell their brands,” says Young. “You really can’t sell your brand without hip-hop.”

It’s a feeling that repeats Lamar’s own words when he was announced for this year’s show back in September. “Rap music is still the most effective genre to date,” Lamar said. “And I want to be there to remind the world of why. They got the right one. “

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