Kendrick Lamar is playing a different game

Let’s be honest: Super Bowl LIX was a snore. Thank God for Kendrick Lamar, whose halftime performance marked the first time a solo hip-hop artist headlined the Super Bowl. While most halftime shows serve merely as hit-filled career retrospectives, Lamar’s performance was a carefully crafted display of audiovisual storytelling designed precisely for this moment.

Lamar is coming off one of the most triumphant years of his already illustrious career. Just one week before the Super Bowl, Lamar made history by garnering not one but five Grammy Awards for “Not Like Us,” a feat previously unimaginable for a diss track. (For the uninitiated, a diss track is a combative song that engages a rival, usually another artist, in a sort of lyrical boxing match—in this case, Canadian rapper Drake.)

Instead of pandering to audience nostalgia with a medley of greatest hits—something the powers of capitalism would certainly espouse—Lamar made the most of his time on screen by telling a story that needed to be told. His Super Bowl show may have lacked the explicit political critique of his past performances, like when he performed atop a graffitied police car at the 2015 BET Awards or when he rapped “The Blacker the Berry” in prison chains at the 2016 Grammys. One would be forgiven for believing Lamar had toned it down for the masses. However, a closer look suggests that he is still the prophet speaking truth to power he has always been. For those who have ears, let them hear.