Certified bogeyman Kendrick Lamar to play Super Bowl of Drake’s nightmares

The Big Game, a.k.a. The Super Bowl, the sporting event in which childhood dreams become realities, will play host to the star quarterback of childhood nightmares. Per Variety, Kendrick Lamar, the rapper who came out recently as a “certified bogeyman” on his hit song “Not Like Us,” will perform at the 2025 Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime show. While inviting a self-described bogeyman is a betrayal of the Super Bowl’s ever-faithful little boys and girls demographic, it’s especially nightmarish for Canada’s favorite son, Drake, whom Lamar has haunted all year.

Posing as an everyday platinum-selling superstar rapper in the show’s announcement, Lamar played innocently with a football throwing machine as if he wasn’t secretly a burlap sack filled with bugs. “I’m Kendrick Lamar, and I’ll be performing at Super Bowl LIX,” he says in the ad. “Will you be pulling up? I hope so. You know there’s only one opportunity to win a championship.”

Last year, The Super Bowl was the most-viewed television broadcast in history. Thus, it stands to reason if Taylor Swift’s boyfriend can find himself, once again, in The Big Game, it means more than a hundred million people can hear Kendrick Lamar call Drake a “pedophile,” “colonizer,” and a “fan.” It’s not an incredibly envious position that Lamar more than happily played into.

“No round twos,” Lamar quips at the end of the announcement, referencing Drake’s supposed comeback for which the bell has yet to sound—he still hasn’t responded to Lamar winning their feud. “Let’s get it.”

This isn’t Lamar’s first Super Bowl. He performed in 2022’s all-star West Coast rapper halftime special alongside Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Eminem. It should be noted that this was before Lamar was publicly identified as a bogeyman.

If you have an unruly child or a Drake that you’d like scared into behaving, Kendrick Lamar will be playing the Super Bowl on February 9, 2025.