NFL Takes Fans Behind The Scenes Of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show

BY Gabriel Bras Nevares 312 Views
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NFL Behind Scenes Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl Halftime Show Hip Hop News
Feb 2, 2025; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Kendrick Lamar, Winner of Record of the Year, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, Best Music Video, and Song of the Year for ‘Not Like Us’ at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. Mandatory Credit: Dan MacMedan-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Kendrick Lamar and SZA's continued Billboard Hot 100 dominance with "luther" adds to this post-Super Bowl halftime show interest.

Kendrick Lamar just surprised many fans with his three exciting features on the new album from Playboi Carti, MUSIC. But one new venture doesn't mean that another just falls to the wayside. The NFL just dropped a 32-minute documentary on YouTube titled "How Kendrick Lamar’s EPIC Super Bowl Halftime Show was Designed & Built in 8 Minutes." It goes over a lot of the background information and planning for the February 9 spectacle in New Orleans, as well as the more practical aspects of how it all came together. Apparently, six months of planning went into the 13-minute performance, which took eight minutes to set up on the Caesars Superdome field.

"This literally will change the way you do halftime," creative director and production designer Bruce Rodgers remarked of his 19th go-around on the Super Bowl halftime show with Kendrick Lamar as the main event this time around, who rocked a video game-themed stage. "We’ll have to have a full team building the square, same with the diamond, same with the circle." Of course, Kendrick's pgLang team took point on much of the extravaganza's conceptualization.

Kendrick Lamar SZA

"The car is the icon of this era for him as far as album covers [GNX], in the video, so it was only right to have it as part of the performance," the company's creative director Mike Carson remarked concerning the GNX that they put in the middle of the Super Bowl field. In addition, another big detail to note is the 500 crew members that helped to build and break down the stage for the performance. We're sure that many other factors played into this show. And Kendrick Lamar is still reaping the rewards.

For example, his SZA collab "luther" off of GNX nabbed another week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it four weeks in total at the top spot. Elsewhere, Kendrick Lamar is still causing controversy, particularly over the aforementioned Carti collabs. Some people called out his perceived hypocrisy considering his Drake disses, whereas others allege he cut a Drizzy and King Vamp collab from MUSIC's tracklist. The hate gets realer, the love gets fake, but when Dot's this great, that's how he should like it.

About The Author
Gabriel Bras Nevares is a staff writer for HotNewHipHop. He joined HNHH while completing his B.A. in Journalism & Mass Communication at The George Washington University in the summer of 2022. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Gabriel treasures the crossover between his native reggaetón and hip-hop news coverage, such as his review for Bad Bunny’s hometown concert in 2024. But more specifically, he digs for the deeper side of hip-hop conversations, whether that’s the “death” of the genre in 2023, the lyrical and parasocial intricacies of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, or the many moving parts of the Young Thug and YSL RICO case. Beyond engaging and breaking news coverage, Gabriel makes the most out of his concert obsessions, reviewing and recapping festivals like Rolling Loud Miami and Camp Flog Gnaw. He’s also developed a strong editorial voice through album reviews, think-pieces, and interviews with some of the genre’s brightest upstarts and most enduring obscured gems like Homeboy Sandman, Bktherula, Bas, and Devin Malik.