Kendrick Lamar has dominated the entertainment headlines in recent months. This is in large part due to his feud with Drake that sprang from personal and industry competitive tensions since the early 2010s and developed into a series of subtle diss and indirect jabs against each other in their track releases. These eventually culminated into direct diss tracks. After a series of back and forth diss tracks, Kendrick appears to have ended the battle with his Not Like Us track, a hugely successful song that debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.
The song also went number one in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. On the track, Kendrick lambasted Drake, alleging the exploitation of artists, betrayal of friends, inappropriate conduct nearing paedophilia, and questioning his cultural authenticity. The music was West Coast hip-hop club sub-genre, with Kendrick delivering the lyrics in an exaggerated cadence and a very catchy chorus that made the track an instant smashing hit and a cultural moment.
Kendrick would later win five grammy awards for Not Like Us at the 2025 Recording Academy awards, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year. And he performed the song to the delight and cheers of the Hollywood audience. Kendrick also performed the song a week later at the Super Bowl — the most significant sporting event in North America — causing the track to re-enter top spots on the charts. But Kendrick’s super-bowl performance went beyond a simple performance of the diss track and his other popular songs.
Woven throughout the performance were imagery, symbols and commentary meant to evoke the cultural memory of the struggles of the black community under white supremacy in the United States. It featured renowned actor, Samuel L. Jackson, dressed as “Uncle Sam” (the national personification of the United States and Government) delivering lines between songs, such as “no no no no! Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto!”
It was a satirical commentary on the racist belief that Black American culture and art are undignified and uncivilised. Kendrick himself said the “revolution shall be televised” making a twist on the 1971 black liberation song by Gil Scott-Heron The Revolution will not be Televised.
He also mentioned “40 acres and a mule,” referring to the unfulfilled 1865 promise of reparations to newly freed slaves. In addition, as part of the set, backup dancers clothed in red, white and blue synchronised to form the American flag before splitting and collapsing in perhaps an allusion to the collapse of official America’s essence and values.
Various media outlets have lauded the performance as a brave and authentic rebuke against rising fascism, especially as President Donald Trump was in the audience. Some blogs even labelled Kendrick a revolutionary and champion of black struggles. As working-class activists and revolutionary youths, we must critically examine the situation. We must underscore both the boost that musicians, like Lamar, could bring to the radicalisation of young people and its limitations.
The Super Bowl performance was a powerful commentary on racism. But it stops short of highlighting the necessity of overthrowing capitalism. And that is not surprising. Lamar had once described himself as a “conscious capitalist”. It is not that revolutionary ideas cannot be spread through art, even when the activist-artist is not anti-capitalist. But we must be clear of the thin line between the propagation of revolutionary ideas in the arts and the cultural commodification of revolutionary aesthetics.
Invoking imagery of racism, with suggestive anti-racist politics, in itself is not revolutionary. America is saturated with cultural and entertainment pieces that denounce anti-Black racism while simultaneously upholding the material and ideological status quo of capitalism in several ways. Since the end of the massive waves of Black Power and Civil Rights in the 1960s, there has been a gradual but steady de-radicalisation of Black politics that linked anti-racist and anti-capitalist aims. And, no group has done more to reinforce the ideological foundations of the capitalist status quo among the Black working poor in recent times than the Black bourgeoisie, including Black celebrities.
We have seen this pattern among some of the most popular and extravagant Black celebrities, who use revolutionary iconography in their art while simultaneously praising the exploitative capitalist system as being meritocratic, and flaunting their wealth.
Jay-Z, for instance, once claimed he was like “Che Guevara with bling on” in response to critiques of the contradiction between wearing a Che Guevara shirt and a diamond-encrusted necklace. He later justified the comparison by arguing that both he and Che came from environments of poverty and deprivation, making them similar, even though this claim was not correct.
Che came from a bourgeois family and committed class suicide. And, while Che Guevara grew up to oppose the system, Jay-Z embraced it through collaboration and assimilation. Jay-Z’s commentary reflects a new Black celebrity gospel: the notion that Blackness alone makes one inherently radical.
One way to understand this behaviour is that the personal and commercial brands of Black celebrities often rely on social capital within oppressed and racialized communities, particularly Black communities. We can thus see some of these celebrities’ questionable and sometimes laughable claims of being radical as efforts to maintain relatability. That is why Jay-Z for example, insisted that he “hates being called a capitalist” despite his wealth and social position.
The system has failed to deliver optimal material outcomes for poor working people, leading to widespread discontent and resentment towards capitalism. Corporations exploit these sentiments by packaging them as entertainment for profit, even as they caricature revolution and ideologically reinforce the status quo.
We equally see a similar pattern of contradictions in the lyrics and politics of Kendrick Lamar who engages more with social issues in his music than the likes of Jay-Z. For example, while he criticizes Drake over alleged sexual misconduct in Not Like Us, Kendrick had featured Kodak Black, with a history of rape allegations and colourist remarks on his albums. Also, his back and forth diss tracks with Drake were filled with misogynistic and homophobic tropes which are antithetical to progressive or revolutionary thinking.
The National Coordinator of the Socialist Youth League (SYL), Kayode Ani, gave an insight into dangers associated with celebrities cosplaying revolutionary aesthetics. This, as he notes, might present the revolution as an unserious and easy entertainment, with the success of the celebrity being used as a tool of de-radicalisation, and a way to buy in oppressed and racialized groups into the individualist ideology of meritocracy and talent.
This is not to dismiss the possibilities that radical musicians and their music could contribute to processes of conscientisation and mobilisation. It is noteworthy that Sabi Hu, a popular Kenyan popular rapper, sampled Lamar’s Not Like Us that had just come out at the time,to produce Reject Hio Bill, a song that became an anthem during the massive youth rebellion against the finance bill in Kenya last year. But radical music is not enough. We must take concrete action.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI & Emmanuel IRO-OKORO
