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00:00Let's take you to the US, because in the next few hours, one of the biggest global moments in sport meets one of the biggest rap stars in the world, and with it a day that advertisers dream of.
00:10The payout must be worth it, because the cost of a 30-second commercial is $8 million.
00:15For the Super Bowl, 120 million people set to watch tonight in New Orleans.
00:21Kansas City Chiefs facing Philadelphia Eagles, and has long been the tradition, the star selected for the halftime concert is always the Zeitgeist.
00:29And tonight it's the turn of US rapper Kendrick Lamar.
00:33What a week it's been for him, winning five Grammys on Monday, including Song of the Year for Not Like Us, an anthemic track where he disses his rival rapper Drake.
00:42We're going to get on to his potted history in a moment. Let's first have a look back at the moment itself, the halftime Super Bowl show in its 59th year.
01:00Come on, y'all.
01:08That's all right. Come on, y'all.
01:30Come on, y'all.
01:47It's the one and only D.R.E.
01:50Dr. Dre, you little buster.
01:52You know I'm ridin' with the D-O-double-G.
01:55West Coast, make some noise.
01:59Well, Kendrick Lamar had a brief cameo in the year. Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre performed back in 2022.
02:05But to be artist headliner, you're seen across the industry as a pinnacle moment.
02:09Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, Compton-born, one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, producing in just over a decade.
02:16Five albums, four back-to-back US number ones, 22 Grammy Awards and seen as a master of wordplay.
02:22Let's go to New York. Let's hear his story from root to fruit and bring in Jason Buford,
02:27who is a music writer and journalist for Rolling Stone, GQ, Vanity Fair, New York Times, amongst others.
02:33Great to have you on the programme, Jason.
02:35Let's start at the beginning.
02:37Born in 87, parents who'd moved to Compton, L.A. from Chicago.
02:41I think they basically had to fight to make things work.
02:44A story of a mum and dad working in fast food restaurants, sleeping in a car sometimes as well.
02:49And when he was born, it was a tough start, wasn't it?
02:53Yeah, it was a tough start. I mean, it's kind of the definitive black experience for a lot of people,
02:57where you move from Chicago to Los Angeles and your parents are not well educated
03:03and they're trying to move their way up in the world.
03:06And it's very difficult, you know, systemic racism, segregation, poverty.
03:11There's a lot of these things that plague a lot of our community.
03:14And Kendrick is defined by a lot of that.
03:17And then we go to the school years.
03:19As he starts to grow up, his teacher has done some interviews saying he was a bit of a loner.
03:23He had a slight stammer, but his teacher had encouraged him to study poetry.
03:27So he goes from there to start battle rapping at 12. Is that right?
03:31Yes, he starts rapping at 12, around that time.
03:35And around that time is when he also starts hanging out in the streets with his friends.
03:39So, you know, his first record, Good Kid, Mad City, is about that time in his life,
03:44when he was a teenager, 16, 17, still in high school,
03:48and the memories that him and his friends have about finding God after a night of street life.
03:56And so a lot of his beginnings start where, you know, you have Section 80, for example.
04:02There's songs about or a song called Cartoons and Cereal,
04:07where he's talking about growing up and eating Apple Jacks
04:11and kind of this power structure that exists in this country and understanding where it comes from.
04:16Right. He's a really precocious kid at a very young age where he's like reading Malcolm X
04:20and reading Martin Luther King and all these different things.
04:23So he has always been a writer.
04:25Which gives you a sense, kind of old school in a sense,
04:28that a modern sort of album on Spotify that you hear, you can dip in and out.
04:33The idea that those that love his music say it's novel-like.
04:37You go through the whole thing.
04:39But then take us to 2015, Jason, which many say it is masterclass moment.
04:43To Pimper Butterfly, which coincided, I should say, with BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement,
04:50and his song Alright becomes this unofficial anthem for the movement.
04:54Let's just take a listen to We're Gonna Be Alright,
04:58and we'll talk about and explain it as to why it became so big afterwards.
05:03Miners.
05:09They not like us. They not like us. They not like us.
05:18OK, they just zipped through history there and going straight to They Not Like Us,
05:22which we may as well start with.
05:23I was about to say it. I was about to say it. Wrong song, guys.
05:25Let's go back. Let's move from there and go back a bit,
05:28because this is the Zeitgeist song of the moment.
05:30And this is about basically a diss track, essentially allegations that Drake says is calling him a paedophile,
05:37to which Kendrick Lamar says, quote, he is about the sport of the music.
05:42Yet it's won him five Grammys and some would say it has taken him to be on stage tonight.
05:47What's your take on this?
05:49Yeah, so I'll go back to Alright a little bit.
05:51You know, Alright drops in 2015 and like towards the end of the Obama era
05:57where people are still realizing that like racism actually still exists,
06:01that it's just not just because Obama's in office, it doesn't mean anything.
06:04And so you have Alright, which is not really a hopeful song,
06:08but rather a song that says, as a community, we'll get through this issue. Right.
06:13And so I think that is very prototypical of Kendrick, somebody who really has the backing of the black community.
06:23Right. And so you fast forward to now in 2025, Not Like Us comes out.
06:30I believe it was June or May it comes out.
06:33And it's essentially a song about racial unity in a lot of ways and about how hip hop is his birthright as a black man
06:41and as a man who comes from these communities that hip hop was birthed in.
06:47Right. Because hip hop is an oppression art form.
06:50And so it's kind of what Kendrick is saying against Drake is that, hey, you black and Jewish kid from Canada,
06:57you cannot accurately represent us in the same way I can.
07:01So I think taking that and going to the Super Bowl with it is.
07:07It's astonishing in a lot of ways, it's astonishing for a lot of people to see,
07:11because you don't usually see someone who so accurately can describe kind of our racial makeup and our racial politics
07:20within the biggest stage as the Super Bowl. So I think for a lot of people, it really matters.
07:25And you don't often see people outside of jazz and classical music winning the Pulitzer Prize for music.
07:30And you touched upon it, this contribution to telling the complexities of African-American experience.
07:35And we're going to play it because it is so important to the movement.
07:38This is we're going to be all right.
08:01He's a massive star, but not a conventional star, is he?
08:04So, first of all, he has this huge success. I talk about the Pulitzer Prize.
08:07He disappears for five years. He suffers depression, comes back, gets into this spat with Drake
08:12and also outside of convention in a sense that he's not, you know, he's not a drinker.
08:17He's not into drugs. He's very much on a focus mission, telling his own story and being so open about it.
08:24I think it's complicated because on some level, yes, this is surprising because he's always been a reluctant superstar,
08:32but he's fitting the cape very well and very seamlessly to the point where I wonder, did he always want to do this?
08:41Yeah. And what's the answer?
08:43Because I think it's a little bit of both.
08:47I think obviously the beat for Drake renewed a certain competitive fire in his heart after coming off of Moral and Big Stubbers,
08:57which is such a raw record about his complexities.
09:01And it's like about therapy speak and it's about going to therapy as a Black man in our community.
09:07Therapy is not something that's like widely discussed.
09:10And so I think for Kendrick, people were slightly shocked that he came out with like that.
09:17And it was out of the blue. It almost feels like an Arthur meme of a verse where it's like it's out of the blue.
09:22And you're kind of wondering like, damn, OK, this is sudden and this is new.
09:27And I think the beat for Drake renewed this aspect of him where he wants to be at the top.
09:33You know, he named himself King Kendrick on Good Kid, Mad City.
09:36And so this halftime show was a coronation of a lot of those things to the point where I wonder.
09:45You have set up the perfect hors d'oeuvre with the guacamole, the Doritos, the tortilla chips ready to watch.
09:53And I actually understand the experience a bit more for your average layman tonight.
09:57Pleasure to talk to you, the esteemed journalist Jason Bufford in New York. Thank you.