Kendrick Lamar brings viral diss track to Super Bowl stage

Kendrick Lamar commanded one of the world’s most high-profile stages Sunday as the Super Bowl’s halftime headliner, yet another feather in the cap of the rap laureate who has ascended to new heights of pop stardom.

Lamar performed a string of his classics while toying with his audience who had one major question: would he perform “Not Like Us,” the searing diss track that served as the knockout blow in his eyebrow-raising rap battle with Drake?

In a word? Yes.

The wildly infectious hit released in May 2024 hears the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lamar — the first solo rap artist to helm a halftime show at the Super Bowl, which this year saw the Philadelphia Eagles pummel the Kansas City Chiefs — use his punchlines to accuse Drake of pedophilia.

“I wanna perform their favorite song,” he said at one point during the 13-minute set — the Grammy-winning track’s ubiquitous, instantly recognizable bass line resounding — “but you know they love to sue.”

He offered his classics like “Humble” and “DNA” as well as tracks from his most recent album “GNX” — he began the set atop the Buick Grand National it’s named for — including “Squabble Up” before sending fans into a frenzy in delivering the goods, a knife-twisting rendition of “Not Like Us.”

Lamar cut the profanity and the word “pedophile” but didn’t stop short of the money line, rapping “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minoooooor” on live television in front of tens of thousands of spectators and an estimated 100 million viewers.

In delivering the lyric “say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” Lamar stared right into the camera, dancing on the Canadian rapper’s rap-battle grave while sporting a chain with a massive pendant — a lower-case a.

The performance is all but sure to kick off