Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX performance has generated a lot of online chatter, and surprisingly, not all of it has to do with Drake. When the Grammy-winning rapper took the stage for the halftime show, the stage itself took the form of a tic-tac-toe board–but X’s and O’s were accompanied by a triangle and a square, which were meant to evoke the aesthetic of a “PlayStation-style controller,” according to the show’s coordinators and set designers. The idea–which Lamar personally dreamed up–was meant to represent the rapper’s life as though it were a video game.
“I think the was symbolic, his way to reach young people,” art director Shelley Rodgers told Wired. “A lot of it is showing his journey, [showing him] traveling through the American dream.”
Creative director Mike Carson added that Lamar and his production company, pgLang, are “really into keeping things clean and minimal.”
“We went with a monochromatic concrete look and allowed the video game motif to come alive through dialogue, lighting, choreography, and music,” Carson said.
But despite the stage’s streamlined, minimalist design, the folks running the show had several difficult hurdles to overcome. Lamar, his backup dancers, the lighting, and the stage itself had to be set up and ready to go in under eight minutes. Once the performance ended, production had had roughly six minutes to get everything off the field–without messing up the turf. Even though the Superdome’s turf is synthetic, protecting it was still no small task, especially given the fact that part of the set dressing was a real GNX that had been heavily modified to allow Lamar’s numerous backup dancers to enter the stage in a clown car-esque manner.
“They were on board with our vision from day one,” Carson said of Shelley Rodgers, who worked to bring the vehicular optical illusion to life. “Even with this being one of the largest halftime footprints ever, Shelley and team came with clever ideas and guidance to help us maintain the design integrity and get this beast across the finish line.”
But every good game needs a villain, and the halftime show appeared to serve as the final act in Lamar’s seemingly endless beef with fellow rapper Drake. At one point in the show, Lamar told his female backup dancers that he wanted to perform “Not Like Us,” but had decided against it because “people like to sue.” But near the end of his 13-minute performance, Lamar performed a lightly censored version of the incredibly popular diss track. The “life as a video game” theme also resurfaced at the end of the show, with Lamar yelling “Game Over!” as the same words appeared in lights across the stadium.
Drake has yet to make a statement about the halftime performance. Lamar’s rival was reportedly out of the country during the Super Bowl.