Kendrick Lamar played on the term "the Great American Game" with a polarizing, Samuel L. Jackson-narrated performance that felt like a Spike Lee Joint in music form. Like every Kendrick Lamar offering,

Kendrick Lamar, one of hip-hop’s most venerated artists for the past decade, performed “Not Like Us,” a diss track aimed at Drake, to cap the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans, the first to be headlined by a solo rapper.

The Compton rapper's performance, which featured Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, Mustard and Serena Williams, vacillated between deference to and defiance of expectations.