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- [00:01]
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- [00:19]
Stephen Thompson
Super bowl lix has just wrapped up and the Philadelphia Eagles are your champion. They beat the Kansas City Chiefs decisively and denied the Chiefs a third straight championship. I'm Stephen Thompson. It is 11 on Sunday night. We're recapping the super bowl and the halftime show with Kendrick Lamar on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.
- [00:44]
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This message comes from Pemco Mutual Insurance Company. You know that moment when things take an unexpected turn and you get that sudden sinking feeling that maybe it could have been avoided? Pemco Insurance wants to help you avoid that feeling by sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's preventable pitfalls. Because Pemco's commitment to their customers goes beyond the moment of acclaim, it's about being with their customers every day. More@pemco.com Prevention this message comes from BetterHelp Online Therapy. Relationships of all kinds are complicated, and they tend to come with a lot of tough questions. From questions about co workers to family to romantic partners, therapy can be your safe space to talk about challenges you face in any of life's relationships. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign up takes only a few minutes. Visit betterhelp.com NPR to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com NPR this message comes from Thuma. Create your oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods by stripping away everything but the essential. Thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details with clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma bed collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. To get $100 towards your first bed purchase, go to Thuma Co, NPR this message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair@warbyparker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country.
- [02:28]
Stephen Thompson
Joining me is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Hey Gene.
- [02:32]
Gene Demby
What's good with you, Stephen?
- [02:36]
Stephen Thompson
We'll get to what's good in just a moment. Also with us, culture writer and critic Shmira Ibrahim. Hey, Shmira.
- [02:42]
Shamira Ibrahim
Hey, Stephen. Two weekends in a row, I know.
- [02:44]
Stephen Thompson
It is so nice to have you back for another late Sunday night. So, two years ago, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs battled a close fought super bowl that came down to the final moments. Tonight they played again and it was not close this time. The Eagles jumped out to a massive lead and dominated in every phase of the game. Though the Chiefs did score a few times late to pull the final score to 40 to 22. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was named the game's MVP. We're going to talk about Kendrick Lamar's halftime show and we'll even talk about a few of the commercials, but I wanted to grab a few thoughts on the game itself. Gene, I know you to be a lifelong Eagles fan. We have recorded entire podcasts about our respective football fandoms. I am guessing that you are a happy man right now.
- [03:35]
Gene Demby
I'm very happy. I'm also, like, a little disconcerted because the nature of this whooping, it was like, so comprehensive. It was so holistic. You know, if you're an Eagles fan, you're like, oh, we might lose this, or if we win, it'll be close. You'd never imagine a demolition like this. You know what I mean? So even though this happened, I was like, I was at your house, Stephen, when the Atlanta Falcons were up on the Patriots 28 to 3 and somehow lost that super bowl at the end, it was one of the most banana. And I remember just being like, oh, my God. And so a cosmic jinx could happen. Like, I was like, oh, we're gonna win this. I was like, oh, I will never say that's. My Eagles fandom has bruised me so much over so many years. I'm like, nah. It got to the point where, I mean, even when Shamir and I were sexing, it was like, is this really happening? Like, it seemed like everything we did was right. Everything was working, and nothing was working for the Chiefs. Like, those things lining up that way in one game is bananas.
- [04:29]
Stephen Thompson
Anyway, at one point, Gene, you texted me during the game and said, the Chiefs look like the Jets.
- [04:36]
Shamira Ibrahim
I feel like as the resident New Yorker, I should take offense to that. But I never cared about the jets, even when I cared about the NFL, so it's fine.
- [04:45]
Stephen Thompson
Well, Shamira, you come into this game, you're a New Yorker. You're a. Would you say lapsed Giants fan?
- [04:51]
Shamira Ibrahim
Yes, I would say a lapsed. I think that is a fair label to put upon me, yes.
- [04:57]
Stephen Thompson
So what did you think of this game? What was your rooting interest and how did you feel about how it turned out.
- [05:02]
Shamira Ibrahim
Well, I reluctantly had to put my hat in with the Eagles one out of solidarity with my fellow NFC east team. One thing New Yorkers and Philadelphia fans share in kinship is our innate destructiveness at the site of success, which is what I can deeply identify with. I am in fact surprised that Gene is here and not on a car directly to Broad street, which is a testament to his current life as a family man.
- [05:29]
Stephen Thompson
But not currently dangling from a lamppost. Exactly.
- [05:34]
Shamira Ibrahim
And to wit, these are three texts that Gene sent to me near the end of the match. He said, I'm so confused. I mean, I'm happy, but I'm confused. Gotta be happy for Philadelphia.
- [05:45]
Stephen Thompson
Yeah. This game really felt like an accumulation of the suspicions that had mounted around the Kansas City Chiefs over the course of the season, won a historic number of close games. They were consistently pulling games out in improbable ways. And on one hand, that is the sign of a winner, that is the sign of a champion. That is the sign of a well coached team and a well led team. But it is also the sign of a team that is not necessarily going to go into the super bowl and dominate. And it just felt like all those one score games, this still felt like a culmination of a team that had really been kind of hanging on by their fingernails. And then once they got to the super bowl, they fell off the cliff.
- [06:36]
Gene Demby
I got into this very annoying argument with my Uber driver last week who was like, oh, you know the Chiefs, I don't know if any guy beat them. And I was like, they've been riding their luck all season, right? Like sooner or later the coin is going to flip the wrong way, like. Cause some of these games were games they could have very realistically lost. Right. So many things have to go right. For you to win one super bowl, you have to be really good. You have to get injury luck on your side. You have to be able to hold on to your player, you know, your key pieces, whatever. Like, you know. But is that three years in a row? That's like a.
- [07:05]
Stephen Thompson
Once you start paying Patrick Mahomes $450 million, then you have to pay everybody else less.
- [07:10]
Gene Demby
Absolutely. And so how do you keep a team together with that setup? And like, to do that three years in a row was like, that's. I mean, if they had won the day, it's like, what are we doing now? Like, I mean, like that would be like a historic amount of good luck over the course of three years.
- [07:23]
Stephen Thompson
Well, in addition to what turned out to be a very lopsided football game. There was also a halftime show that felt like the culmination of a very lopsided beef.
- [07:35]
Gene Demby
Oh, my gosh.
- [07:36]
Stephen Thompson
You had Kendrick Lamar coming out and kind of getting his victory lap performing a Super bowl halftime show with support from SZA with kind of narration from Samuel L. Jackson.
- [07:49]
Gene Demby
Salutations, it's your uncle Sam, and this.
- [07:56]
Stephen Thompson
Is the great American game. Shamira, I'm gonna start with you. What did you think of the halftime show?
- [08:03]
Shamira Ibrahim
Well, what do you think about it? We kind of did see two drubbings on that field, right?
- [08:10]
Gene Demby
Oh, no.
- [08:11]
Shamira Ibrahim
It's definitely an eventful night for America's greatest tradition, Right. Some things that Kendrick did were so prototypically Kendrick that they were unsurprising to an extent. And also still surprising. Kendrick diverted from years of tradition from the last few major acts by choosing to open a set by performing an unreleased song that he only showed a 60 second snip of it, and promoting his last album, I already kind of knew where we Were. Out the gates. The shiny GNX car was definitely an amazing look. And then he proceeded to completely ignore the back half of his catalog and REM you guys that he has a tour to promote and do all of his most current singles while also committing to aesthetics that he has had for years. Right. The black nationalist aesthetics. The way that he plays around with stage production fields on his shows. The way that he plays around with vocal intonations and constantly reminds us that he works out harder than all of us by rapping and jogging at the same time.
- [09:10]
Stephen Thompson
Which his cardio was on point.
- [09:13]
Shamira Ibrahim
Absolutely. It was a very Kendrick show. And also I'm ready for the next chapter of it at this point.
- [09:20]
Stephen Thompson
Yeah, I hear that. How about Eugene?
- [09:22]
Gene Demby
I was just like fixated on his jeans. I was like, oh, is he wearing flared jeans? I was like, oh, wait, he got the little bell bottoms that have it happening. Picking him to begin with was kind of like a, you know, as big as Kendrick is like his music, he is not like a. You know, he's not Shakira and he hasn't music that's like, I would say probably more danceable than music. The perform tonight.
- [09:44]
Shamira Ibrahim
Absolutely.
- [09:44]
Gene Demby
And he went away from that. And I thought the presentation of it was really, really well done considering, you know, hip hop doesn't always translate to that kind of like, to the stadium feel. I've seen Kendrick lav at an outdoor concert once and he was incredible. Like, and it's like a really hard thing to pull off for A hip hop artist, right? But he sort of filled up the space a lot, which is, like, again, really hard for a hip hop act. Right? You know, I love the little Serena Cameo. Serena Williams cameo, which of course, is like, you know, Laird, like, Jim Compton. She's Da Drake. You know what I mean? Like, it's just. There was just so much pettiness in the performance.
- [10:14]
Shamira Ibrahim
You've got to be a little impressed at the fact that Marquee artists about to do a stadium tour has the opportunity to showcase, you know, the best of his catalog to, like, ramp up ticket sales. That is a level of commitment to pettiness that, I don't know, I have in me. And I am a long avowed hater. Right. I have to respect it.
- [10:34]
Stephen Thompson
This is the exclamation point on the incredible run that Not Like Us has had. It was one of the biggest hits of last year. And just last weekend, as Shamira and I discussed on this show, Not Like Us won record of the year and song of the year at the Grammys. Like, that song is getting, like, all these stamps of mainstream validation. I mean, mainstream validation. It was, you know, all over the Billboard charts all year last year. It's not like it wasn't mainstream before, but I was surprised how deep he went into the verses in that song.
- [11:03]
Gene Demby
Yeah, absolutely. I also liked how he was showing a little leg. He's like, am I gonna do it now? Am I gonna do, like, little snippets, like, sprinkled out? I was like, oh, he is. He's trying to. Everyone is here because they want to see how this goes on. I mean, also, like, can he do that song? Like, I was like. I was like, can you do this song at the Super Bowl?
- [11:31]
Shamira Ibrahim
There were so many intentional choices made in that respect. To your point, Gene, you know, there was like, the coquettish, like, oh, no, I'm not gonna do it. You know, when that first one would happen where he kind of plays around and backs up off the instrumental, I was like, watch him still do it. Anyway, that was my exact reply in the group chat. And then, of course, he runs it back and plays the entire first verse, which was. I think I had resigned in my head. Oh, he's gonna do the instrumental. Mix it in somehow. And not only did they do the first verse, they intentionally cut out the mixing of the backing track so that we could hear the stadium at some rather pivotal points in the verse, which is more damn than if he had just done it all the way through himself.
- [12:13]
Gene Demby
That's bananas. That is one of the most crazy things I've ever seen in my life. Wow.
- [12:19]
Shamira Ibrahim
To add to that, the fact that he even did euphoria as a track just felt like extra pointed, like, oh, you think I can't do this? So I'm just going to do it twice as hard just to prove that I can do this, you know, which is rather damn to reserve your mainstream portion primarily for your main collaborator who's sza. Right. And then also just the cascade of hits that he's made off of an opponent in the last months is definitely an unprecedented choice, but it was certainly an amusing one. All in bell bottom jeans to boot. Right? Yeah.
- [12:48]
Stephen Thompson
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the commercials. If I have had one kind of primary complaint about the super bowl commercials over the years, it's that they've really become kind of little more than a parade of celebrities. Did you guys have any, like, any impressions of the commercials? People are always like, ooh, what are the big hot super bowl ads like? I don't care.
- [13:15]
Shamira Ibrahim
I used to be that person who regularly paid attention to the ads and what they indicated, marketing trend wise, what we were paying attention to. I have found them to be more disappointing to engage with more than anything else because there's just a general lack of creativity. I think the most compelling celebrity associated brand is probably, probably Ben Affleck with Dunkin Donuts, which is more a testament to his Bostonian nature than anything else.
- [13:39]
Stephen Thompson
Yes.
- [13:40]
Shamira Ibrahim
Where the hell are Matt and Tom? Forget them suckers. Matt Damon and Tom Brady don't have the height of a champion.
- [13:44]
Stephen Thompson
We got a new squad. Dunking sequel. Affleck and Belichick, Dun King. They're very on brand.
- [13:50]
Shamira Ibrahim
Exactly, exactly. I have found it a little damning because I think that, you know, what celebrity means in the contemporary era has come to mean everything and nothing. Right. I think if you look like 15 years ago, those same celebrities were still doing branded advertisements for money. Right. But they would go to Asia or go internationally where those commercials wouldn't be advertised here because it dulled your prestige a little bit to actually have commercials airing here while you were trying to be considered a quote unquote, serious actor. Right. I think the fact that there's like a shameless integration now is telling, I guess, probably. What do they call it now, Recession indicators. Right. You know, like, oh, wow, we just all need to get all the checks we can get now. Right. You know.
- [14:35]
Stephen Thompson
Well, and it's part of that whole chase that bag mentality.
- [14:38]
Shamira Ibrahim
Absolutely.
- [14:39]
Stephen Thompson
Somewhere along the way we went from don't sell out to make that money.
- [14:42]
Shamira Ibrahim
Exactly, exactly. To the point that, you know, the creative elements of it are fully, you know, abandoned. Like it's, you know, product, celebrity, maybe three well written lines. Right. You know, we foresee it. It's a little bit disappointing. I think the only ad that has actually stuck in my head which says a lot is seal Sigeb as a seal.
- [15:02]
Stephen Thompson
Oh, boy.
- [15:03]
Shamira Ibrahim
Which is a testament to how terrible sis was.
- [15:08]
Gene Demby
My power, my pleasure, my faith.
- [15:13]
Stephen Thompson
And yeah, the ones that stood out were nightmare fuel. Like the seal as a seal was straight up nightmare fuel. There was a whipped cream ad. Oh, my God.
- [15:23]
Gene Demby
I got it from the couch. I was like, what? This is disgusting. I felt like, oh, I'm somebody's dad. I'm somebody's old father.
- [15:30]
Stephen Thompson
And I was like, yo, like every super bowl, whether it was one person watching a Super bowl alone in a room or 60 people crammed into a rec room watching the super bowl together communally, I felt like every room with a TV in it in America went at the same time.
- [15:48]
Gene Demby
I was like, what is this an ad for? And then it was. It was like coffee creamer or whipped creamer.
- [15:53]
Shamira Ibrahim
I did enjoy. I don't know if enjoy is the right word, but I was tickled, I guess, by, I think, angelsoft. It was a toilet paper company that said, hey, here's your bathroom break. I thought it was amusingly clever enough that I let it pass, but really, that just shows you how low the bar is more than anything else. Why are you still here? This is your potty tunity. It's simple. Do not watch this. So you there, get off the couch and go to the bathroom.
- [16:24]
Stephen Thompson
I have to say, there was one ad kind of late in the broadcast for Totinos with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson and. And it's like kind of a scene from a movie where they're sending the alien home and the alien ends up dying. Rest in peace, Jasmo. We didn't know him as well as you, so it's not as sad for us.
- [16:45]
Gene Demby
Not that we didn't want to.
- [16:46]
Stephen Thompson
Just didn't open up around us. It feels very much like an I think you should leave sketch. It feels like Tim Robinson and his people wrote this as opposed to all of these 30 second clips that cost, you know, who knows how much money to make and who knows how much more money to actually broadcast? Those ads are just throwing money and celebrities at the screen. I was glad to see an ad that seemed to actually understand that you can make people laugh with Your commercial.
- [17:16]
Shamira Ibrahim
I would be remiss if I didn't point out Nike did a women's sports advertisement, which wasn't trying to go for the humor. So there were no hehes out of me. Right. It's standard Nike aspirational messaging. Sure. You can't be confident, so be confident. You can't challenge. So challenge. You can't dominate. So dominate. It is a big deal that women's sports got that much airtime on, like, national televised event, which is our closest to a monoculture. It does speak to the big strides that we've made in the last two years that it's even getting that amount of space.
- [17:52]
Gene Demby
Like, Nike has this very, like, specific sort of grammar to their commercials, to their advertising film they've had for like 40 years. And they always, it always works on me. Yeah. And so, like going through, you see Sha'carri, you see, like, all of them, like, doing like, oh, you, you're a woman. You're always gonna, you can't win, so you may as well go win. I was like, that was, I'm sorry. I was like, oh, it worked. It worked on me. It worked on me. It was like when the end of that Nike commercial, it was like Jordan Childs inverted doing like a one hand handstand. I was like, oh, oh, yeah, I too need to buy a sports bra. Like, let's go, let's go.
- [18:26]
Stephen Thompson
All right, well, we want to know what you think about this year's Super Bowl. Find us on facebook@facebook.com PCHH that brings us to the end of our show. Gene Demby, Shamira Ibrahim, thanks so much for being here.
- [18:38]
Shamira Ibrahim
Thanks as always.
- [18:39]
Gene Demby
Appreciate you, Stephen.
- [18:40]
Stephen Thompson
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go and find out more at plus.npr.org happyaur or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Mike Katsif and edited by Jessica Reedy. Hello. Come in. Provides our theme music. Clips of the halftime show are credited to the NFL. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Stephen Thompson and we will see you all next time.
- [19:16]
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- [19:52]
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