The reviews came gushing in on Monday: “…the Most Hip-Hop Halftime Show in Super Bowl History” (Billboard); “Kendrick Lamar’s performance was as Black and subversive as all get-out” (Washington Post); “The best word to describe the rapper’s halftime show is ‘existential.’” (New Yorker).

Kendrick Lamarr, the subject of the reviews, performed symbolic set pieces with a poorly choreographed army of red, white and blue-clad Black dancers on Sunday at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. The Grammy Award winner rapped a mile a minute through a sound system that failed to make his edgy lyrics understandable to most of the huge audience watching from home. (Why no subtitles?)

My friend Swamp Rabbit shrugged as I complained. “Most of them critics liked it,” he said. “They say he was speaking truth to power, and so on.”

I had to laugh. “Truth to power? Power loves this guy. He’s making millions for the entertainment industry.”

I told my feral friend that the best thing to be said for the critics is that they were on deadline and having panicky thoughts:

Oh shit, what am I to make of this mess? I’d better write superlatives to prove I’m au courant. Better describe Lamar’s 13-minute opus as subversive, though it’s not clear what’s being subverted when a rich Black pop star performs for a mostly White crowd that paid thousands of dollars a pop to witness a bloated, anticlimactic spectacle (Super Bowl) that reaffirms the system that the pop star says he loathes...

“You’re just a cynical old white guy,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Maybe Kendrick is a pop star and a prophet preaching against racism. It ain’t no accident he gave props to Gil Scott-Heron, the guy who wrote ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.'”

I threw one of his empty beer cans at him. “Funny you should mention Gil Scott-Heron. He wrote that piece more than fifty years ago but it still sounds wittier and more incisive than stuff like ‘Not Like Us.’ I looked up the lyrics to that piece. Lamar seems more interested in dissing his pop star rival Drake than agitating for the revolution.”

“I don’t really know what revolution means. Odd Man. I guess we’ll find out when it happens.”

“It is happening, you mangy fool. The problem is it’s being led by a small gang of ultra-rich white supremacists who control all three branches of government. And it is not being televised.”