The final year of rap-industry macher Jay-Z’s five-year, $25-million deal with the NFL that has remade the Super Bowl’s ionic halftime spectacle around the larger music industry’s — and the world’s — broad embrace of hip-hop culture now has its endgame. The NFL announced on Sunday, as the season’s Week 1 games were about to get underway, that rapper Kendrick Lamar would be Super Bowl LIX’s halftime music artist.

The announcement was a joint communiqué, from the league, halftime-event sponsor Apple, and Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s production company. The show will take place on Sunday, February 9, 2025, airing on Fox, from the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

“Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date. And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They got the right one,” Lamar was quoted as saying in the announcement’s press release.

Like Jay-Z, Lamar is as much an entrepreneur as an artist. Co-founder of music and visual media production firm pgLang, Lamar is also a 17-time Grammy Award winner and the first non-classical, non-jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his 2017 album DAMN.

“Few artists have impacted music and culture as profoundly as Kendrick Lamar,” said Seth Dudowsky, the NFL’s Head of Music. “Time and time again, Kendrick has proven his unique ability to craft moments that resonate, redefine, and ultimately shake the very foundation of hip-hop. We’re excited to collaborate with Kendrick, Roc Nation, and Apple Music to deliver another unforgettable halftime show.”

The Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show telecast will be produced by DPS, which has produced four Super Bowl halftime shows that have received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations and one win. The most recent, led by Usher in 2024, averaged 129.3 million viewers — is the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show on record.

Good Timing

The Roc Nation-NFL halftime show relationship has proven both well-timed and very effective. As Vice President Kamala Harris put it prominently and succinctly on her Facebook page, “Let’s be clear: Hip hop culture is America’s culture.” And since Roc Nation has managed the music for the annual event, its numbers have steadily improved. This year’s Super Bowl LVIII starring Usher as the featured performer became the most-watched halftime performance of all time, garnering three 2024 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Variety Special (Live). In 2023, The Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show starring Rihanna scored five Emmy nominations, taking home two, including Outstanding Directing For A Variety Special, a first in Super Bowl Halftime history. In 2022, Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, which celebrated hip-hop’s 50^th anniversary, featured Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar and garnered five Creative Arts Emmy nominations. The critically acclaimed performance won three Emmys.

Battle Royale

In addition to his massive fan base and litany of accomplishments, Kendrick will also bring to the Super Bowl a notorious and long-running feud with Drake, his one-time collaborator and, since an escalating series of disses and highly public insults starting in 2013, his nemesis.

The contentious relationship has been a rap version of the famous Hatfields and McCoys vendetta in 19^th-century Appalachia. It added a political angle when in 2016 during an interview with several YouTube influencers, then-President Barack Obama was asked if he thought Drake or Lamar would win in a rap battle. Obama responded: “Gotta go with Kendrick. I think Drake is an outstanding entertainer. But Kendrick, his lyrics [for ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’] was outstanding. Best album, I think, last year.” Two weeks later, Drake released the track “Summer Sixteen,” dissing Obama and rapping: “Tell Obama that my verses are just like the whips that he in / They bulletproof.”

(Drake is no slouch when it comes to Grammy Awards — he has five — but he had also boycotted the nominating process for several years, contending at it didn’t sufficiently address hip-hop as a genre.)

The situation brings with it the potential for any number of narrative arcs, but the betting seems to be that Lamar has won the battle, with The Ringer asserting that Kendrick’s Super Bowl appearance caps his “rise to the highest levels of pop culture,” while conversely sinking Drake “to the lowest levels of his career.”

It’s a melodramatic contention, but the just the gossipy sort, and with very high stakes, that sports and entertainment thrive on. Expect plenty of sparks from both rap camps between now and next February.