It's game on for Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar via Netflix's NFL Christmas Day special and the Super Bowl, respectively. Illustration by Pixel Pusher; Alex Slitz/Getty Images; Gregory Shamus/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Pity the Emmy voters this year, at least those tasked with casting a ballot for the live variety special. Forget past winner nostalgia trips from Elton John or Archie Bunker (and apologies to fellow 2025 nominees like Saturday Night Live and the Oscars). The real showdown we've been waiting for is between two cultural icons who delivered some of the most lauded and groundbreaking live performances of the decade: Kendrick Lamar's zeitgeist-slapping Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show versus Netflix's Beyoncé Bowl Christmas Day spectacular. Related Stories TV Lesli Linka Glatter on How Her Next Project Aims to Boost Filming in Hollywood: "We Have to Keep Our Industry Alive" TV After Dual Emmy Nominations for 'Severance,' DP Jessica Lee Gagné Is Ready to Take on More Directing The former felt like a bullet fired into the heart of the culture, the latter like a perfectly cut diamond reflecting decades of influence. And each, in their own way, was notably political, Lamar landing blows about racial inequity, and Beyoncé, by steeping her show in tradition, reclaiming country as a Black musical expression in an age when some of its biggest white stars have weaponized it on behalf of MAGA. At a moment when entertainers are being marginalized or told, once again, to shut up and sing, this duo, on the nation's biggest stages, resisted. They absolutely did sing, but they did anything but shut up. For critical darling Lamar, 2024 was arguably the biggest year of his 15-year career. The Compton native's ability to mine his own history and street cred, lace it with humor both rich and dark, and synthesize it into next-level storytelling had already cemented his GOAT status among fans - not to mention, of course, the leveling up on his feud with Drake upon the release of "Not Like Us." By the time Lamar took the stage for the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show in February, the track had peaked at No. 1 on Spotify in 10 countries and swept the Grammys. With the beef so widely known that both your parents and your kids had heard about it, Lamar could have simply taken a victory lap at the Superdome, where he was headlining the game's first-ever solo rap halftime show. Instead, the Pulitzer winner delivered a rapid-fire, career-spanning set wrapped in a video game motif that doubled as cultural commentary. Two narratives emerged: one broad, about a politically divided America (the game followed the Trump inauguration by just a few weeks), and one personal, aimed squarely at the Drake feud in a performance that made it clear for his rival that it was Game Over. From a stage shaped like PlayStation controller buttons, dancers in red, white and blue formed an American flag with their backs turned to one another. Samuel L. Jackson's Uncle Sam heckled him ("Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto!"); Lamar dueted with frequent collaborator SZA; and Serena Williams, a fellow Compton native, made a cameo, Crip Walking across the turf. The Super Bowl halftime show hasn't always been fluff - Prince and Bruce Springsteen performed it during the 2000s, and of course there was the national reckoning over TV standards after Nipplegate in 2004 - but too often it has been hypey and unserious, dating back to when pop music entered the stadiums in the '80s and early '90s. And until this year, politics had never entered the fray. But at a tense moment for the country following the inauguration, Lamar elevated the halftime show without sacrificing his artistry, letting flashes of Compton and barbed political commentary onto one of the world's biggest stages. He even teased the lawsuit-spurring "Not Like Us" lyric that alleged Drake was a pedophile. In just 13 minutes, Lamar made the halftime show feel alive, relevant and urgent in a way it hasn't in years. Perhaps the last artist to truly dazzle on that stage? Beyoncé, who shook the Super Bowl in 2013. Halftime spectacles are her thing now, and with Netflix, she created an event of her own: the NFL's 2024 Christmas Day Halftime Show, instantly branded as Beyoncé Bowl. Shot with the precision of a Super Bowl broadcast and the gloss of a prestige concert film, the performance transformed Houston's NRG Stadium into a runway, a dance floor and a pulpit for Beyoncé's genre-hopping career. Opening with her entrance in a gleaming white ensemble, the set offered a tight 14-track tour through her Grammy-winning Cowboy Carter, interwoven with earlier hits like "Break My Soul" from Renaissance and the ubiquitous "Freedom" from Lemonade - made even more omnipresent months earlier by Kamala Harris' campaign playlist.