Not Like Us: Conservative Media’s Reaction to Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show -

By Griffin Cappiello

This is an independently submitted op-ed for our Quill section. Views and statements made in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Tower.

This past Sunday, I was watching the Super Bowl for one reason: Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance. Following his rap feud with Drake over the past year and his recent Grammy wins, I was looking forward to seeing what the award-winning rapper would bring to music’s biggest stage.

I was not disappointed. Mr. Lamar’s show included several of his most popular songs, dancers clad in red, white, and blue to form an American flag, and cameo appearances from Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, DJ Mustard, and Serena Williams.

Immediately following the show, I took to social media to see what other people had to say about the performance. To my surprise, it seemed that many people did not share my sentiments towards the show- particularly several popular conservative media commentators.

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire posted on X five times in seven minutes, complaining about Mr. Lamar’s performance.

“This is easily the worst half time show I’ve ever seen,” read one post, while another claimed that “the vast majority of football fans haven’t even heard of most of these songs.”

Mr. Walsh’s fellow Daily Wire hosts Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles seemed to be confused by the performance because they couldn’t fully hear what Mr. Lamar was saying.

“This half-time show is gibberish, but at least it appears to be patriotic,” stated Mr. Knowles, while Mr. Shapiro posted, “I can’t understand a word [he’s] saying.

Many other users also had complaints about Mr. Lamar’s halftime show, with gripes about the lack of diversity among the performers, and some even going so far as to claim that Mr. Lamar’s work is not music.

To say these complaints upset me would be an understatement.

I typically find myself on the conservative side of the political aisle – there’s a reason these commentators popped up on my X feed – but I couldn’t shake an unsettling feeling while reading posts criticizing Mr. Lamar’s performance.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the halftime show, but I can empathize that it wasn’t for everyone. However, the comments I read online seemed to be different from simply not liking the performance; it seemed to me that people were complaining for the sake of complaining.

In fact, none of the posts I saw were direct critiques of the quality of the performance itself. Rather, people made the relatively surface-level complaints that one might expect from non-rap fans. Instead of addressing the overtly political undertones of the performance – as might be expected of a political commentator – people instead took the opportunity to bash a multi-award-winning artist.

Mr. Walsh’s comments in particular stuck with me. His claims that NFL audiences have never heard of Mr. Lamar’s work are simply absurd. Mr. Lamar finished the year with three songs on the Billboard Year End Hot 100 chart and four of the songs during his Super Bowl performance had over 1 billion streams.

NFL audiences are also getting younger with diverse appeal across racial demographics, so it makes sense that the league would try to appeal to all interested parties during its biggest event of the year. Even many NFL players were excited to see Mr. Lamar perform, as shown in a TikTok posted by @houseofhighlights.

Perhaps Mr. Walsh, a 38 year-old white man, felt left out that he wasn’t the target demographic for the performance, but to claim that the performance was “trash” because he couldn’t relate to it goes too far.

It’s unfortunate that many of these commentators were unable to fully understand the deeper symbolic meanings of Mr. Lamar’s performance. It would have been much more fruitful to read an analysis of his critique of American society rather than lazy and baseless whining because the artistry of a Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper went over their heads.

In the future, maybe political commentators should leave the halftime analysis to music fans, or at least keep their comments short and succinct, like Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk did in his post on the performance: “This music is not my style.”