Watching Kendrick Lamar Live in New Orleans

This is an edition of the weekly newsletter Tap In, GQ senior associate editor Frazier Tharpe’s final word on the most heated online discourse about music, movies, and TV. Sign up here to get it free.

I’m stupid. I honestly didn’t think the halftime show would be as bad as Drake and his legion of owl-in-bio Stans have been fearing it would. Kendrick is a consummate showman, I thought. He has way more tricks up his sleeve and won’t overindulge by firing more shots into an already lifeless body. But if anyone can put up a new all-time instant classic performance and find the space to be diabolical, it’s Mr. Duckworth. Drake, throw that fake Enfant Riches Deprimes bullet-hole hoodie out and walk out with the Daft Punk helmet he warned you to wear, buddy.

What’s worse than somebody playing a chart-topping, five-time-Grammy-winning song that dances on your grave for an audience of about 100 million people? How about your ex crip-walking to it for added measure? When Serena Williams popped out I immediately hit like 5 different group chats with “headshot.” This, and other thoughts, live from a Meta watch party in New Orleans full of influencers and media personalities who all just yelled “A-minorrrrrrr” at the top of their lungs.

• “Not Like Us” was literally blaring out of every other bar on Bourbon Street today—the turn-up before the storm.
• Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam, coaching Kenny on the ideal Black male presentation America wants to see… like I said a couple weeks ago, this is the supersized sequel to Kendrick’s defining 2018 Grammy performance. Going from one of the GOAT black comedians to one of the GOAT black thespians is natural evolution. This was bigger than just a surprise musical guest.
• Kendrick’s turning the Buick Grand National into his own personal Batmobile
• Leave it to Kendrick to start his halftime show off with a song we still don’t have in CDQ, lmao. Drop that shit! (For those who forgot, it’s the verse from the teaser that heralded GNX’s surprise drop.)
• The halftime show was as quiet as this party’s gotten. People literally shushed the room when it began. But I still couldn’t be sure if he teased a new verse or two, especially in the scene under that streetlight.
• Also, scenes! Camera angles! Dave Free’s directing was on Christopher Nolan tonight. Best gag: Kendrick popping up to enter the frame for “peekaboo.”
• You’ve never seen halftime-show dancers dressed with such intentional informality—fits that, much like GNX, were about authentic hometown aura above all else.
• “Euphoria”!!! This is, honestly, worse than Kendrick doing “Not Like Us” in my opinion. “NLU” is too big to not perform, but doing a second diss track—the better one, the actual best song of 2024? That’s a choice, and a villainous one.
• But teasing “Not Like Us” was just as evil. “You know they love to sue.” You have to wonder if the lawsuit hyped him up to lean all the way in.
• “Luther” is a smash, and that was a nice little tour preview with SZA.
• You wanted “Alright?” Too bad—Kendrick did that with Dre already. One thing this creative team isn’t going to do is force a re-run for the crowd. Beyoncé’s halftime show only went as far back as December 2023. These are living legends in the midst of their imperial phase—a set that played like a career retrospective would be hustling backwards.
• Man, if Serena had been in the “NLU” music video or at the Pop Out, that would’ve been ugly. But this? Here? Extend the Australia sabbatical, Aubrey. Delay the album. This is Summer Jam Screen level. (And before you weep for dude, remember he just dissed her husband randomly on his album two years ago.)
• He performed way more of The Song than I thought, and boy did this room light up for “wop wop wop” and “A-minor”.
• The spirit of Freddy Krueger possessed Kenny during that smile-to-camera moment on “Say, Drake…”—a fourth-wall break to stare across continents and directly into Aubrey’s soul through the phone that he’s watching from over Chubbs’ shoulder.
• But not ending with that song was a masterstroke, because…
• On everything I love: The first time I heard “TV Off” I had it pegged as the perfect halftime-show closer. Mustard’s triumphant horns, that refrain. Walking around New Orleans this week, I’ve been hearing that song more than usual, at most of the big event parties. It’s just titanic. Hell of an ending, hell of a show.