Kendrick Lamar headlines Super Bowl LIX halftime — the most-watched halftime show ever
At Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Kendrick Lamar performs the halftime show of Super Bowl LIX (Philadelphia Eagles 40, Kansas City Chiefs 22). Samuel L. Jackson appears in character as 'Uncle Sam,' SZA joins for 'Luther' and 'All the Stars,' and the set culminates in 'Not Like Us' — the diss track that closed the Drake feud. Serena Williams crip-walks across the field during the performance. Nielsen reports a peak audience of 133.5 million viewers in the U.S., the most-watched halftime in NFL history.
Why it matters
Kendrick performing 'Not Like Us' to the largest American television audience of the year — nine months after releasing it as a diss aimed at the most commercially successful pop artist of the 2010s — is hip-hop's most public consolidation of cultural power in its 50-year history. The halftime show resolves the question of whether the genre is fully central to the American mainstream by simply demonstrating it: 133.5M people watched a Black rapper from Compton perform a diss track on the biggest televised stage the country has.
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Citations 3
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- B The New York Times — Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show: A Layered Statement Retrieved 2026-05-24.
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