Black History in A Minor: Kendrick Lamar, Nativism, and the Price of Our Native Land

Dr. James PetersonAt this point, Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance feels like ancient, esoteric history, but it is worth noting that it never needed an explainer. It stands alone as a work of art—visually, sonically, kinesthetically, and intellectually. Whether or not we, as spectators, have the capacity to fully comprehend the hermeneutics at play is beside the point. What Lamar delivered that night was not a show designed to explain itself to everyone, particularly not to white Americans, older Americans, or those outside the dynamic ecosystem of Lamar’s particular contributions to hip-hop culture. It was, instead, an offering—a performance steeped in coded language, symbolism, and history that reverberates most deeply with Black audiences, and especially with those of us attuned to the somber notes of Black history in “A Minor.”

There is a kind of mourning and a kind of mastery in what Kendrick Lamar gave us during that performance. It is the musical embodiment of his now-legendary anthem, "Not Like Us," a song that, in the annals of hip-hop battle rap, is both a cultural sledgehammer and a deftly crafted treatise on Black American artistic distinction. The song has already won too many Grammys. But the performance itself—like much of Kendrick’s work—was impenetrable for some. Pundits and social media commentators stumbled over themselves trying to decipher it. Some dismissed it. Others demanded subtitles as if the layers of Lamar’s genius should be served up like fast food or foreign films too densely depicted in lost translations.

But Kendrick was never speaking to them. He was speaking to US.

What Kendrick tapped into that night—and throughout his career—is a variation of nativism. Not the exclusionary, xenophobic nativism that animates white nationalist politics, but a radical Black American nativism. A cultural claim that asserts: We were here first. Our stories matter most. Our culture—in all of its forms: music, art, athleticism, ingenious inventiveness, creative excellence—is the most potent, most dominant expression of American culture itself.

For authentic aficionados of K.Dot’s body of work, Kendrick’s performance was not a halftime show. It was a historical reckoning, a reminder, and a reclamation. It was the latest movement in the long, somber symphony of Black history—a history often played in a minor key. When Kendrick Lamar performs on a stage like the Super Bowl, he is not simply entertaining. He is testifying.

My son, James, put it best when we talked about the show afterward. He said: “I think that while looking at and analyzing the Super Bowl performance, one thing that has to be considered is that Kendrick’s not putting on this performance for people who don’t consume his stuff to be able to get it right away. If you don’t get it, you have to want to get it. You have to engage. You have to learn more about his catalog, about the symbols, about why the American flag shows up during ‘HUMBLE,’ why he stages himself under a streetlight surrounded by homies, and then runs when Uncle Sam shows up.”

The show was filled with this kind of symbolism: bodies crawling out of the GNX, a visual echo of the clown car chaos of American racial spectacle; Lamar’s own performance under surveillance, as if constantly watched, constantly targeted. And yes, the gnawing presence of Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam—Uncle Ruckus and Nick Fury rolled into one—a nod to the impossible, contradictory roles Black folks are asked to perform in this country.