Admit it: You might have thought Drake would be the first to do it. Aubrey Graham is practically made for the Super Bowl halftime show. His live performances have always felt like Las Vegas, and his catalog is vast, diverse, catchy, and largely inoffensive. Considering his popularity—76 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone—Drake seems to be everything the NFL would want for the second Sunday in February.
Never a man of modesty, Drake seemed to believe this himself. In last year’s “First Person Shooter,” he composed a chorus around the idea that he alone is as big as the Super Bowl. Sure, the line was a bit boring (aren’t many of his lyrics?), but in October 2023, the idea of Drake taking the Apple-sponsored main stage didn’t sound so far-fetched.
Well, we can safely add the Super Bowl mention to Drake’s long list of regrets regarding “First Person Shooter.” On Sunday, his nemesis — the current prince of the music industry and permanent mayor of Los Angeles — Kendrick Lamar, in his typically cryptic manner, announced that he will headline the Super Bowl LIX halftime show. It’s the culmination of a year that has seen Kendrick rise to the highest echelons of pop culture. It’s also the final groundbreaking for Drake’s grave.
To recap, in case you’ve been locked in the same bunker as Jim Downey: After years of hip-hop cold war between Drake and Kendrick, the mild provocations of “First Person Shooter” – where Drake and collaborator J. Cole had the audacity to suggest they were in the same class as Kendrick – sparked an all-out nuclear attack.
First came Kendrick’s collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin on “Like That” – which now feels like a gentle joke, despite K.Dot’s promise to bury Drake. But after Drake responded, Kendrick brought out the big guns: “Euphoria,” a seven-minute dismemberment of Drake’s character. “Meet the Grahams,” an open letter to Drake’s son, his mother and the rapper himself that reads more like a RICO indictment than a battle rap. And of course, “Not Like Us,” probably the only No. 1 song in Billboard story that revolves around calling someone a pedophile. It was the song of the summer by any reasonable measure (sorry, “Espresso”; sorry, Chappell and Charli) and instantly one of the best diss tracks ever recorded. (In May, three days after its release, we named it the seventh best diss track of all time. In hindsight, we were five or six places off.)
On Juneteenth, Kendrick gathered an all-star cast of LA stars to dance on Drake’s grave at the pop-out show. At a sold-out Forum in Inglewood – while millions more watched on Amazon and followed along on Twitter – Kendrick sang “Not Like Us” five times, pausing occasionally to let the crowd stretch out the “A Minor” line for what seemed like an eternity. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough for the singing Canadian, Kendrick also brought Raptors legend DeMar DeRozan along to join in the celebration. You can imagine Drake watching, smashing a crystal goblet on the marble floor of his North York mansion as OVO Fred runs to grab the broom.
The pop-out felt like the final victory lap of an artist who had defeated his rival in stunning fashion. But now we’re almost certainly assured of at least one more performance on an even bigger stage. Come February at the Superdome, Kendrick will likely deliver a set that climaxes or peaks with “Not Like Us.” While we don’t know how he’ll handle some of the piquant lyrics (it’s hard to imagine the censors would love the outro to “69 God”), we can only assume that over 100 million people will tune in to watch another Drake funeral. The biggest question is which LA football legends will he bring to the stage. DeSean Jackson? Tyron Smith? Ronnie Lott?
It cannot be overstated what this feud did to K.Dot’s career. No one ever doubted his artistry or commercial success. (The only line Drake uttered during the feud that really resonated was: “Kendrick just opened his mouth, somebody give him a Grammy now.”) But despite billions of streams and a handful of plaques, Kendrick was always a step or two behind Drake in terms of sales. (For perspective, Kendrick has 25 platinum-certified songs. Drake has 8031 more than Taylor Swift.) Kendrick was popular—he was big enough to make a guest appearance on the Interscope/Death Row ensemble’s halftime show in 2022—but the thought of him headlining one of those shows himself seemed like a backpack rap fan’s fever dream.
That was fine, of course; Drake was chasing Elvis and the Beatles, while Kendrick was chasing Tupac and Eckhart Tolle. Both rappers had their clearly defined boundaries. But the argument in general – and “Not Like Us” in particular – has bridged that gap, if not erased it entirely. As of Sunday, Kendrick’s monthly listeners on Spotify are…The Wrestler‘s parent company, was at 68 million, just shy of Drake’s 76 million. Four months after its release, “Not Like Us” has shown tremendous staying power. (It was at No. 12 on Spotify’s daily U.S. chart on Sunday, while “Like That” crept back up to No. 50. Drake, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found.)
Now Kendrick becomes one of the most unlikely Super Bowl headliners we’ve ever had, the first solo hip-hop artist to earn the coveted spot and only the fourth overall, following the aforementioned performance by old hands Dre-Snoop-Eminem, the cursed 2004 show (where Diddy and Nelly shared first place with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake) and the Black Eyed Peas in 2011 (who, with all due respect, qualify for this shortlist on a technicality). He’s also one of the most important and contemporary artists to ever grace this stage: Aside from The Weeknd in 2021, headliners over the past decade have been either safe pop artists (Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake) or established artists (Usher, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna – who, let’s be honest, may never release another record). Kendrick was the most interesting possible choice on the list. After the past year, he was perhaps the most logical, too.
For Drake, meanwhile, the announcement of Kendrick’s Super Bowl appearance feels like yet another low point in his not-good, very bad year. His back catalogue is enough to make him rich for the rest of his life, but his attempts to regain his footing in recent months have failed. His 100GB “data dump” and the three new songs it yielded have been largely ignored, as have his two collaborations with pop pariah Camila Cabello. His most high-profile moment since he exited the fray with the disastrous “The Heart Part 6” was a Ras Trent impersonation that people hoped was AI. The greatest artist of his generation is lost, thrown off course by an opponent he’s long wanted to face but was completely unprepared for. The credibility he sought seems to have slipped away forever, and his iron grip on the mainstream has loosened as a result. He is now the living embodiment of an old, wise saying: If you don’t start anything, you won’t achieve anything.
Somehow, Drake has become everything the NFL didn’t want to put in the spotlight, a thought that seemed unthinkable 11 months ago. Maybe it’s time we acknowledged it: Despite the success, the accolades, and the career that seemed destined to one day host the Super Bowl, doesn’t it seem like Drake is further away from that stage today than ever before?
