Kendrick has not televised the Revolution
A couple of weeks ago, Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was interrupted by Zül-Qarnaįn (“zool-cair-nain”) Nantambu who deviated from his role in the 400-strong cast to momentarily stand atop Kendrick’s GNX - the limited-edition car manufactured in Kendrick’s birth year and central prop in the show - all to flag-bear for the people of Palestine and Sudan.
Defiantly, in front of the first sitting President to attend a Super Bowl, Zül-Qarnaįn’s protested against the persecution and erasure of people victimised by American foreign policy. Unlike Kendrick, known for his politically-charged performances that are subject to long interpretive deconstructions, Zül-Qarnaįn been censored, blacklisted and nearly criminally charged. This is how the revolution will never be televised.
Kendrick Lamar stands amidst bowed dancers dressed in red, blue and white during his performance at the Super Bowl halftime. Photo: Free Malaysia Today, Creative Commons licenses.
Kendrick’s show was at-no-point devoid of political meaning. The poetic irony of employing infamous actor Samuel L Jackson, to play Uncle Tom, could not be lost on the audience. Black dancers don the red, white and blue of the American flag, Serena Williams makes an appearance to do the Crip Walk, thereby challenging the respectability politics that criticised her 2012 Olympics dance celebration for being “too loud.. too reckless… too ghetto!” (as Samuel L Jackson’s character has it), and Kendrick makes explicit reference to political events like the broken promise of 1865 to give reparations to freed slaves (“Forty acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music”). It is hands down one of the most significant, politically conscious and most watched Super Bowl halftime performances of all time.
However, when a show is inescapable viewing for an American (and global) audience, when it is platformed, funded and programmed by the transnational corporations the songs critique, when it is watched by the American President, your art is no longer resistance but has been co-opted by the same white supremacist forces you seek to hold to account.
“When it is watched by the American President, your art is no longer resistance but has been co-opted by the same white supremacist forces you seek to hold to account.”
Kendrick’s performed resistance was brought to us by Apple (as of recently facing criminal complaints by the Democratic Republic of Congo for knowingly using “blood minerals” unethically sourced from conflict zones) and was produced by Roc Nation (owned by Jay Z, against whom a child rape lawsuit was only recently dropped). Comparatively, Zül-Qarnaįn’s performance was just barely delivered to the cultural consciousness as it was not broadcast by the National Football League’s own recording system but by handheld cameras from autonomous audience members. It is only through this wider dissemination of information that I am able to write about Zül-Qarnaįn’s protest. As the New York Times aptly put it, “Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Was Political Art, if You Know Where to Look”, an article focusing predominantly on the hidden political allusions, because Zül-Qarnaįn’s protest was suppressed as the security guards quickly tackled him to the ground. The difference between the production and consumption of these two men’s resistance is stark: such controlled propagation of political art through official channels supports the status quo and bears insight on the agenda pushed by the transnational corporations.
The Black fist has taken centre stage on broadcast television, now watermarked as a corporate logo
Political art is often seen as imperative in consciousness raising, but what happens if it, in turn, reduces action taking? Cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s blog post, Gothic Oedipus, argues that “resistant art” can lead to catharsis that may, counterintuitively, satiate our feelings of discontent by performing our disavowal, our desire for resistance, for us. However, where millions of Black Americans watch Serena Williams’ Crip Walk in l Kendrick’s performance and (rightfully) feel empowered, is there room for productive action? Fisher puts it well, when he writes that resistant art ‘plays out in the ‘therapeutic” idea that we can remain a “good person” regardless of what we do’, that ‘“what we are” is defined by an “inner essence”’. This disjunction between thoughts and action is only heightened by highly-commercial political art like Kendrick’s. When resistance is commodified into a spectacle for generating more capital, the powers being challenged no longer feel discomfort or even ‘resisted’ by the artform but rather have found a way to co-opt the discontent for monetary gain. Thus, by controlling the ways in which discontent is expressed artistically, the threat of the revolution is reduced without wholly silencing those expressing it.
In the face of such co-option by transnational corporations, we still have moments of agential protest like Zül-Qarnaįn who ultimately received a lifetime ban from all NFL stadiums but was courageous enough to act regardless of the legal and social ramifications that had yet to be set. Similarly, Colin Kapernick, a valuable sportsman and not merely a replaceable cast member, was (unofficially) blacklisted by the same organisation when he took the knee during the national anthem in 2016 to protest against racist police brutality. In less than a decade, the political salience of Black empowerment and resistance movements has increased demonstrably in mainstream art. Since the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement, the difference in censorship, or lack thereof, between Colin and Kendrick shows a clear shift in social acceptability. (This is, of course, excluding the conservative outlets who have maintained the same racist rhetoric.) And though the reasons for why Colin took the knee have yet to be redressed, this image of the Black fist has taken centre stage on broadcast television, now watermarked as a corporate logo.
Kendrick’s performance is indicative of the changing of the times, how transnational corporations like Apple, the NFL and Roc Nation have co-opted Black resistance, and thus are closing the distance between subversion and co-option with the dollar line. Monetary and commercial success in majority-white countries hinges on artists achieving mainstream appeal. Now hip-hop, a product of Black Americans and thus intrinsically counter-cultural, has become a commodified aesthetic.
“Kendrick’s performance is indicative of the changing of the times, how transnational corporations like Apple, the NFL and Roc Nation have co-opted Black resistance, and thus are closing the distance between subversion and co-option with the dollar line.”
Though Drake’s critics may point to him as a more obvious example of the commercialisation of rap - Kendrick accused him of relentlessly sub-genre “hopping” to follow charting trends - more nuance is needed to see how protest music is inevitably upholding the capitalist system because its production and consumption hinges on effectively selling the revolution back to us. Perhaps inadvertently, musicians like Kendrick may be feeding into the politics of distraction, pacifying listeners with this faux catharsis and enabling transnational corporations to adapt to growing discontent.
Kendrick seems to think the Revolution has been televised, because media consumption today is more a fact of life than a choice
However, it is not that Kendrick is wholly unaware of his upwardly-mobile position or his newfound un-relatability to the working-class since his commercial success. Prior to his rap beef with Drake and J Cole, in countless songs, Kendrick remarks on his own moral fallibility, which only increases with his acclaim and stardom. Throughout his career, whether as “K Dot”, “Dot”, “Kendrick Lamar”, “Oklama”, and most recently “Mr Morale”, Kendrick has been viewed within Black American culture as embodying 21st-century conscious rap - a force of awakening and uplifting - through his skilled social commentary. Kendrick lifts people up sonically but also empowers them politically from “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015) and most recently his album “Mr Morale and the Big Steppers” (2022). Crucially, the fallacy of a singular figure who would be the face or voice of Black consciousness, reveals itself during the Super Bowl when Kendrick exclaims outside of his setlist that “The Revolution is ‘bout to be televised/ You picked the right time but the wrong guy!”
Here, Kendrick is twisting the title of Gil Scott-Heron’s famous song “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”- illuminating the crucial difference in how Gil Scott-Heron and Kendrick see the role of broadcasting in aiding or hampering resistance. Released in 1971, Scott-Heron’s song chastises the passivity of the people - those who expect change to occur without their active contribution. Scott-Heron criticises consciousness as not enough, that a better future will not be “bought to them”. Now, over 50 years later, Kendrick’s music arrives in a time where the ease of streaming enables previously unimaginable listening bases. Kendrick is now the most listened-to rapper, the first to achieve more than 100 million monthly listeners. And with more music released in a singular day of 2024 than the entirety of 1989, media consumption today is more of a fact of life than a choice as it was in Scott-Heron’s time.
Kendrick makes this clear in his closing song of the night, “TV Off”. His line that the “revolution has been televised” points to the democratisation of information, individuals now equipped with phone cameras to broadcast injustices such as the murder of George Floyd. The subsequent American protest movement has reverberated and been imitated globally. However, with little to no structural changes to address the systemic racism of the American carceral system since the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, cynically, many (including myself) question what cultural shift reduced many of BLM’s radical demands to symbolic corporate initiatives. As jarring as it is to see Trump on his first day sign an executive order that would see the termination of all contracts and grants related to “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, these initiatives were never fit for purpose in addressing systemic racism, yet DEI initiatives were one of the few major consequences of BLM, despite the movement having called for far more radical redistribution of police funds towards a welfare state. The establishment seems to make it a habit to adopt popular resistance and repackage it as symbolic wins, with a veneer of emancipation.
Only through community initiatives on social-media can we resist technologies of control, by not relying on the “right guy” sold to us by the cult of celebrity
Scott-Heron’s final verse of his song includes the line, “The revolution will put you in the driver seat,” and Zül-Qarnaįn embodies it. Both he and Kendrick stood atop of the Black limited-edition Buick GNX, the Grand National Experience, yet for entirely different reasons. For Kendrick, on his 2024 surprise album, his motivations with the GNX are repeated on numerous songs “All I ever wanted was a black Grand National”. Alongside the assertion that unlike his earlier work, GNX is a straightforward listen - “F*ck a double entendre” - Kendrick very clearly sets out how this car was an object of his desire and a reminder of his commercial and financial success after his harsh economically deprived upbringing in Compton. However, for Zül-Qarnaįn, the GNX was devoid of symbolic meaning. It was a mere platform for greater visibility for his Palestinian and Sudanese flags. The GNX was for one a prop and the other a stage to amplify their necessary (and, for many, uncomfortable) harms of American foreign policy. However, the silence of Kendrick’s camp since Zül-Qarnaįn’s demonstration has made it clear that solidarity to Zül-Qarnaįn’s protest, cause and consequence are not his concern.
“The silence of Kendrick’s camp since Zül-Qarnaįn’s demonstration has made it clear that solidarity to Zül-Qarnaįn’s protest, cause and consequence are not his concern.”
Fundamentally, it was the audience members who recorded Zül-Qarnaįn and posted their videos online when the NFL did not, who themselves resisted the formal channels of information by broadcasting the disruption. Only through community can we resist technologies of control, by not relying on a singular “right guy” to achieve it for us. Whether it be purposefully, through illuminating verses, or inadvertently, by not speaking out to support a fan like Zül-Qarnaįn, artists like Kendrick too often prove themselves to be fallible. Therefore, the belief that any one individual would be the dominant driver to any social movement, a messiah-figure, is in itself a fallacy that is heightened with the cult of celebrity that drives popular culture. This removes the integral community aspect that enabled Zül-Qarnaįn’s protest to be seen through public intervention when the mainstream broadcasting had attempted to avoid him. Ultimately, as of late, even the public forums of information become increasingly intertwined with the establishment, not only is mainstream broadcasting incompatible with a revolution, but I fear it will remain so for as long as the optic medium of both broadcasting and social media platforms remain profit-driven enterprises that are antithetical to any fundamental redistribution of power or wealth.
We can appreciate Kendrick’s astonishing financial mobility, his record-breaking year and the artistic merits of his halftime show - a rap performance by a Black man and his predominantly Black troupe - without denying how, since 2016, the subversive edge of Black resistance has been smoothed out of popular Western culture. Now as a commodity to be consumed, politicised art like Kendrick often sustains the same institutions that it is claiming to challenge. Ultimately, the very same audience that should be at the helm of resistance, is pacified into inaction. The revolution cannot be televised when its central role is to disrupt our scheduled programming.