Mortal Men: Kendrick Lamar Goes Deep on Lessons of the Assassinations

The masterpiece of the star of the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show is an ode to JFK and other murdered leaders

The legacy of JFK’s assassination still continues to inspire new generations of musical artists, including Kendrick Lamar, who will headline the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, a gig reserved for superstars only.

Lamar's 2015 Grammy-winning album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” concludes with the track "Mortal Man," which encapsulates the album’s themes of black oppression, individual struggle in a racist system, and rising above it all. It is an ambitious 12-minute fusion of rap, R&B, spoken word poetry, including a faux-interview with murdered rap legend Tupac Shakur. The song is wrapped in dark foreboding of violence and alludes to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the recurring murders of civil rights leaders.