This year’s Super Bowl halftime show was hosted by award winning artists Kendrick Lamar and SZA. Kendrick performed a few of his popular songs and was later joined by SZA to sing their joint songs. Many watchers had high expectations going into the performance.

“I think Kendrick and SZA will perform really well together,” said junior Ellie Brown. Brown is a frequent listener to SZA and Kendrick and shared her high hopes for the halftime show. Many people agree that they had very high hopes going in.

Lamar’s performance was thoroughly planned out and had lots of underlying symbols to continue his diss on Drake. Lamar and Drake have been going back and forth and exchanging disses for years, and it quickly became clear that they highly disliked each other. One of the pieces of symbolism seen in Lamar’s performance was the lowercase “a” on Lamar’s chain. The “a” is meant to represent the “a minor” musical key. Lamar’s “Not Like Us” alludes to the “a minor” key in reference to Drake. He wore the chain to reference his diss track.

Additionally, Lamar also brought out Drake’s ex-girlfriend, Serena Williams to dance in his performance, which was another discreet hit on Drake. Finally, he  brought out Samuel L. Jackson to portray TV character uncle Sam from “The Great American Game.”

Lamar’s performance was overall a major political statement that consisted of an insane amount of symbolism and underlying meanings that were left up to the crowd to interpret.

“I thought he was very direct with his hits on Drake,” said Super Bowl watcher and junior Julia Cort. Cort has watched the Super Bowl and the halftime show every year and says this year had the most symbolic performance. This year’s halftime show got lots of mixed reviews overall, but many people along with Cort were shocked at Lamar’s performance and the fact that he called Drake out and sang his diss track “Not Like Us.” His performance shocked all watchers and made them truly think about all of his symbolic statements.