This past Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most-watched Super Bowl in history. According to Variety, 126 million tuned into the game on average, and the biggest spike in viewership happened during the second quarter, with 135.7 million tuning in. You know, when most people were checking out how much time was left until the Kendrick Lamar concert. I’ve also heard – although it’s not in this report – that the Super Bowl lost millions of viewers after the Halftime show. Which is actually pretty common, but it was even more notable this year.
The NFL never pays their Halftime performers, although I believe the NFL picks up the costs of all of the staging and the dancers and everything. Artists choose to do the Halftime show because they know they’ll get a crazy amount of exposure and a huge bump in sales. That’s exactly what’s happening with Kendrick:
After Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, Kendrick Lamar’s music saw a significant jump in streams on Spotify. On Monday, the streaming service announced that the rapper’s music saw a 175 percent spike in the U.S. in the three immediate hours after the game wrapped.
After the performance, Lamar’s streaming numbers saw significant jumps for individual songs from the set list, led by his Grammy-winning Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” which saw a whopping 430 percent jump in streams. Damn‘s “Humble.” went up 300 percent, Black Panther soundtrack’s “All the Stars” with SZA jumped by 290 percent, and “Man at the Garden” from GNX increased 260 percent in streams.
Lamar’s “Euphoria” jumped by 260 percent, “Squabble Up” went up by 230 percent, and “Peekaboo” featuring Azchike went up by 230 percent. Spotify described Lamar’s streaming increases as “The Halftime Effect,” which also trickled its way to SZA’s streaming numbers. The R&B star, who joined Lamar for “All the Stars” and “Luther” during the halftime set, saw her own music go up by 80 percent in the United States.
“Thank you for lifting me up. Thank you for encouraging me and being so willing to bend to whatever I may need,” SZA wrote to Lamar on Instagram after the performance. “You’re a prophet. But you knew that. I wasn’t nervous today. I was ready to rep for u. For US.”
I’m really glad that so many people are curious about Kendrick or they liked what they heard and wanted to hear more. This was seen by many as the final nail in Drake’s coffin – Kendrick has been dog-walking Drake since April and May of last year. Kendrick really stood on THAT stage, looked into the camera with that magnificent smile and said “Hey Drake, I hear you like ‘em young.”
Additionally, there are a lot of white music critics with a lot of thoughts about Kendrick’s Halftime performance and how it was “bad” or “not enough” or whatever. I wonder if people genuinely thought it was going to be like The Pop Out? That man performed on FOX at the Super Bowl, he’s not going to perform “Not Like Us” uncensored six times, you know? I also think the OVHoes are trying desperately to pour scorn all over this.
Photos courtesy of NFL/Apple Music and Getty.
