Kendrick Lamar’s history-making Super Bowl LIX halftime performance wowed the crowd on Sunday night. As the first solo hip-hop artist to headline the show, he brought out Samuel L. Jackson to play Uncle Sam and even had a cameo by tennis great Serena Williams.

Long before he dreamed of playing the Super Bowl, Lamar was inspired by Arron Afflalo and Compton's sports stars.

Kendrick, 37, is a Pulitzer prize winner and a 22-time Grammy Award winner. He won five Grammy Awards for the chart-topping hit, "Not Like Us," just last week at the 2025 Grammy Awards.

Lamar is in the midst of a massive beef with rapper Drake. His award-winning "Not Like Us" is a diss track directed at Drake and is the center of an ongoing lawsuit between the two artists. Williams is an ex-girlfriend of the Canadian rapper, as she and Drake dated briefly between 2011 and 2015 but elected to stay friends.

Kendrick Lamar, idealized as he is as the relative ascetic among his class of self-styled rap princes, is very much attracted to such power. What makes him unique is his relationship to it: the laurels he has won,

How much do halftime performers earn? The answer remains the same—zero. Despite the NFL not paying artists beyond the minimum union scale (approximately $1,000 per day for rehearsals and the performance),