How “undermining genius” from Kendrick Lamar sent Trump home a loser

This year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans could have been a fascist Mardi Gras. Over a week ago, the state police forced more than 100 unhoused people threatened by arrest, to a freezing warehouse from which they blocked the press. State agencies destroyed homeless camp and Operating costs taxpayers $ 17.5 million. Then, this last week, police, secret officials and Department of Homeland Security suffocated Superdome and the city. And of course, Donald Trump would be in the game, the first sitting president – which we have been told by Nauseam all week – to go to the biggest sight in the country. The scene was set in advance when Trump got a nice Fox News interview in which he, who made his frown again, signaled that a judge’s decision to prevent Elon Musk from controlling our financial items doesn’t matter to him. He also chose Kansas City Chiefs to win, quoting his love for Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes Maga Wife, Brittany. He also said he participated in the game for the “good for the country.” As if it wasn’t obvious at this point, Crypto-Coin Trump does nothing for the benefit of the country. He was there to bask as Caesar in a view of authoritarian power. Trump’s message was that resistance was meaningless.

Then, the unexpected: In the first half, the Philadelphia Eagles leash out of Mahomes and Chiefs. The two-time defense masters looked over-fitted-as thugs that fade after being knocked in the mouth. But even this runcing was a pillow fight compared to the break, where hip-hop Maestro Kendrick Lamar took the center. Lamar released an artistic inferno that was rooted in black culture, black poetry and black resistance. Trump’s most prominent racist online troll – I don’t want to link and give them the attention they ask for – was already spit by the fact that it was a “dei Halfime show” that was more pathetic than to disturb. They are pieces of soggy wonder bread, reduced to attack brilliance because it exposes their mediocrity. It’s just stupid to think some added 78-year-old misogynistic caked in orange is the top of masculinity.

But many of the people who saw Lamar were those who are deeply shaken by the constant, unmatched cruelty that pumps us every day. Countless people – I’ve heard from them all week – asked that Lamar would say something about Trump or Musk to the tens of thousands of millions of viewers. They wanted him to take on all the weight at this moment. It is an understandable desire, but it is also unfair: a “save us” burden that always disproportionately falls on the shoulders of black artists. A popular slogan now is “nobody wants to save us but us.” This plea was more “Save us, Kendrick.” But Lamar, who is more of an abstract champion in symbology than political rabbit rouses, performed something right in Trump’s face that I think people will decode for years. It was a structured, deeply layered, colossal middle finger to the worst of us history, Trump and anyone who would try to wipe out black culture in this country.

Playing Samuel L. Jackson dressed up as Uncle Sam and – at least to me – represents the false promise of assimilation through deletion, lamar started in a hanging position. It was not a knee, as in Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police violence, but for a person who is incredibly self -conscious about his every physical and verbal metaphor, in this position on a football field did not start. So many people would have cheered a knee – understandable! – But it would have been too obvious to this man. Then he started by performing only a bar of a lyric that is not found in his catalog. He said, “The revolution is becoming television. You chose the right time but the wrong guy. “

For me, these 16 words are not a puzzle, but a work of art. It’s not literal. It’s something you hear, something you feel and something you interpret. As a moving sculpture or imagery, explain the artist’s intentions, but also how these intentions interact with your own perspective and bowel emotional response. I take it as him says – again in Trump’s face – that our mindset should be directed at revolution but does not look at him to carry the weight. It’s the “right time” but I’m the “wrong guy” if it’s your intention. No more martyrs. This is a “all of us” project.

That “all of us” was on stage. Yes, it was Lamar in the limelight that delivered the most 100 percent pure hip-hop show ever shown to such a large audience. But it was more than the force in one. He had brilliantly black dancers dressed in red, white and blue, looked like an American flag, and he marched right through them, timed it to the lyrics, “40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music / they tried to rich the game, but You cannot false influence. “For my eyes, he teared the flag apart with history and truth – says you can try to link black people, but black culture is an ineradable part of this country. It was especially powerful that he did this in New Orleans, a place that has been left to death time and time again, but is the cradle of the black music that is at the heart of this country’s culture. To say this in light of the man who canceled Black History Month was also important.

At this point, the dancers were all black men. For a later song, he was exclusively framed by black women in almost identical clothes as the men moving with both power and grace. Then they all came together. In the middle of it all assumed a male dancer on his own, Unfured a Palestinian flag attached to a Sudanese flag. His protest was surrounded Of dancers dressed in all black, faces the cover and raising their fist. He held the flags high before he was tackled by security and detained. Whether planned or not, it was associated with the wider resistance themes that felt electric, improvisational and to those who want to kill hope, dangerous. There is so much more to discuss – the selected texts, sza’s genius, a Very pointed Serena Williams Cameo! – But much was also outside of me. I have to read others – like Lamar Codebreaker David Dennis Jr. (Journalist and son of civil rights legend Dave Dennis), who called Lamar’s performance “undermining genius” and perhaps “the greatest rap performance ever.”

As for Trump, according to reports he stood next to his date, Ivanka, during the break and then immediately left. He is our fragile orange flower and could not bear to see his dream of black deletion reprimanded. He could not bear to see art that he was unable to appreciate or understand. He couldn’t bear to look like a loser to choose chiefs because he likes quarterback’s wife. So he hampered it home before the cameras could catch him. After leaving, to make himself feel better, he banned ear.

As for the game, the Eagles Chiefs destroyed before a few late garbage Kansas City Touchdowns made it a 40-22 end result. The Eagles Quarterback Jalen hurt, which was clearly the most salty at Trump’s presence in the construction of the game-then other players went on eggshells-was the official MVP. Now we’ll see if Eagles, a team that after winning in 2018 Boycotted to go to the White Housewill even get an invitation from the king of Petty. Since he couldn’t be to congratulate them, I can’t imagine why, if an invitation is offered, they would accept. (If Chiefs had won, Trump would have prior to the field and chased cameras like a Hollywood Ingénue.)

But as big as Hurts was, they were real MVPs the dancers, choreographers, costume designers, SZA and Lamar. They created something collectively, and we had to understand it as cooperative political art instead of decrating it because Lamar did not stand there reading a left side. Eagles won, and Chiefs lost. But I will remember this as the night when Kendrick Lamar sent Donald Trump home.