Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime show was inspired by video games, says art director Shelly Rodgers.
On Sunday evening (February 9) Lamar became the first solo rapper to headline the event. During the gig, he was joined onstage by SZA, Samuel L. Jackson and Serena Williams while Lamar also made several digs at Drake after the pair’s high-profile rivalry.
During the gig, gaming fans took to social media to share their excitement that Lamar’s stage seemingly paid homage to PlayStation, with the four corners of the stage represented by one of the buttons typically found on the console’s controller.
In a new interview with Wired, art director Shelly Rodgers confirmed that the concept of portraying Lamar’s life as a video game during the gig came from the rapper himself. “I think [it] symbolic, his way to reach young people,” she said. “A lot of it is showing his journey, traveling through the American dream.”
The “rudimentary shapes” on the field were meant to provide a clean, easy-to-understand platform for the rapper to tell that story, added creative director Mike Carson. “Dave Free (director) and Kendrick are really into keeping things clean and minimal, so we went with a monochromatic concrete look and allowed the video game motif to come alive through dialogue, lighting, choreography, and music.”
Production for the 13-minute gig involved more than 50 carts of staging and equipment – each weighing between 680 and 1590 kg while the GNX car had to be gutted and will never drive again.
Following the performance, streams for Lamar’s Drake diss track ‘Not Like Us’ jumped up 430 per cent and the rapper also announced the European leg of his ‘Grand National’ co-headline stadium tour with SZA. The run of shows kicks off in Cologne on July 2 and will include a massive show at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The tour will end in Stockholm on August 9. Tickets go on sale this Friday (February 14) at 9am local time and can be bought here.
In other news, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Sims, Kim Petras has recorded ‘Slut Pop’ cut ‘XXX’ in Simlish.
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