Kendrick Lamar to Headline Super Bowl 59 After High-Profile Rap Feud

Kendrick Lamar is set to headline the biggest stage in music after a blockbuster year.

Fresh off the Grammy Awards, in which Lamar was nominated for seven awards and took home five, the Compton, California, native will take the stage at Super Bowl 59 with special guest SZA on Sunday.

And he did it under the spotlight of one infamous rap beef. Ten months ago, the rapper got his hands dirty and kicked off a brutal back-and-forth with one of the most famous rappers on the planet, Drake. Equal parts exhilarating and unsettling, many fans crowned Lamar victorious in the beef, especially after the spat led to litigation. In his victory lap, Lamar also achieved an extremely rare rap record of the year win for the beef's most revelatory single, "Not Like Us."

Lamar hasn't exactly moved on, either. His latest album, "GNX," features plenty of references that one could argue are directed at Drake and multiple features from SZA, notably a former flame of the Canadian rap singer.

As the Pulitzer Prize winner is set to take the Super Bowl halftime stage, here's how we got here.

It was an innocent bar on Drake and J. Cole's 2023 track "First Person Shooter" that seemingly set Lamar off, when Cole rapped that he, Drake, and Lamar were the "big three" of rap music.

The song followed years of subliminal shots between Drake and Lamar, leading the West Coast rapper to reignite the long-brewing rivalry. On his guest verse on Future and Metro Boomin's "Like That" last March, Lamar distanced himself from the "big three" and said, apparently in reference to Drake: "It's time for him to prove that he's a problem."

Lamar responded with his first full diss track, "Euphoria," just over a week later, calling the rapper a "scam artist." Lamar followed up with "6:16 in LA" in early May. Fourteen hours later, Drake followed up with the diss track "Family Matters" that night, in a track that explicitly claimed Lamar physically abused partner Whitney Alford.

Minutes after, Lamar laid out Ozempic rumors against Drake amid serious allegations of abuse, addiction and a second hidden child in "Meet the Grahams." Then on May 4, he released "Not Like Us," slinging accusations of grooming girls:

"I hear you like (them) young. You better not ever go to cell block one," Lamar rapped. "To any (girl) that talk to him and they in love, just make sure you hide your (little) sister from him."

Lamar went on to perform all five tracks at his star-studded "Pop Out" concert, streamed live on Amazon Prime Video with 16,000 fans in person on Juneteenth.

How does SZA play into all this? Well, she may have chosen a side.

Fans learned that SZA and Drake briefly dated over a decade ago in Drake's 2020 song "Mr. Right Now." SZA confirmed the relationship and clarified the year, which is important (and perhaps ironic, given past accusations against Drake) as she was 18 and he was around 23. The two would later collaborate together on Drake's 2023 record "Slime You Out."

Meanwhile, Lamar and SZA are former labelmates and longtime collaborators, from SZA's 2014 song "Babylon" to their recent "GNX" collaborations "Luther" and "Gloria."

Next month, Lamar and SZA will kick off their Grand National Tour.

Lamar didn't perform at the Grammys, and he hasn't played "Not Like Us" live since he performed it multiple times at his Juneteenth concert (let alone any of his Drake disses). Time will tell if the critically acclaimed track will make it onto his setlist.