Since Kendrick Lamar was announced as the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show’s headliner last September, music fans have been abuzz with excitement, wondering how the Pulitzer-Prize winner would handle the historic gig — the first for a solo rapper.

Fresh off a summer-long beef with Drake that birthed the Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us,” Lamar had the opportunity to put on the pettiest Halftime Show in the telecast’s history. By January, he had also been caught up in a defamation lawsuit over “Not Like Us,” making it unclear whether he’d even be able to perform the song. (He did.) There was also the big question that looms over any televised Lamar performance: what will the socially-conscious rapper have to say, if anything, about the current political climate?

In the past, Lamar has taken opportunities on big stages to address hot-button issues and telegraph his own political anxieties. He’s invoked police brutality at the BET Awards, and mass incarceration — not to mention his general disillusionment with America — at the Grammys. Out of all the hip-hop acts that could have graced the Halftime Show stage, it seemed like Lamar had been........

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