All I Saw In That Super Bowl Halftime Performance Was Kendrick Lamar’s Jeans

The Super Bowl halftime show is basically guaranteed to be the most-watched live music performance of the year, every year. As a Kendrick Lamar fan, I was eager to see what the through line of this performance would be — he’s no stranger to critiquing American politics, but would he bring that theme from his work onto a national stage with the president in the stands? Would he, in fact, perform any portion of his Grammy-award-winning diss track “Not Like Us,” let alone utter Drake’s name? What I could not have predicted was that Lamar’s performance would captivate me, body and soul, because he actually took me on a journey back in time, to when flared jeans were the epitome of cool.

This morning, coffee in hand, I rewatched Lamar’s performance — I wanted to really absorb its meaning, pettiness and industry beef aside, and it had just as much of a revolutionary message as fans have come to expect from the artist. I needed that post-morning playback reminder because, last night, my full attention was on those jeans. I spent the entire performance trying to catch a glimpse of the tag above his back right pocket to see if he was a Levi’s guy, or if I really was seeing a vintage pair of Jordaches in action.

I went through middle and high school in the mid-aughts, during the reign of bootcut and bell-bottom jeans. We wore them with ballet flats, skate shoes, plastic $1 Old Navy flip flops — it truly did not matter; they were the uniform. When skinny jeans came into play, flares seemed to evaporate from my wardrobe and my friends’ wardrobes. They were just so firmly out. Straight legs and boyfriend fits are back now, with skinny jeans officially deemed uncool, but still no sighting of our old friend, the flare.

And then boom: There he was. Kendrick Lamar, standing on the hood of a 1987 Buick, wearing the sh*t out of some light wash, low-rise, bell-bottom jeans. Honestly, I kept expecting him to turn around and give us a glimpse of a brown suede tie holding them together instead of a normal zipper fly.

I think his styling hit me so hard because when he turned to the side, I realized that Kendrick Lamar is one of us, despite the “Not Like Us” attitude. The rap legend is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and I am 5-foot-4. This is likely where our similarities end, but I felt a deep kinship with him when I saw the bottom of those jeans, baby.

The hems on the back are just gone, eaten completely away from being walked on after countless wears. These jeans, it seems, are his very favorites. (They are a $1,300 pair from Celine, apparently, but I can confirm that Walmart jeans wear down just the same). He has put in the hours, just like every high school girl in 2007. He has probably experienced the cold seep of water up the backs of his legs after mistakenly wearing his flares on a rainy day. Admittedly, our asses also looked just like his in low-rise jeans.

New York Times writer Jacob Gallagher has already pointed out that we’re sort of in a Wild West moment of jean trends right now. There’s no single prevailing trend or shape. So, will Lamar’s entry of bell-bottoms mean more men start embracing a snug fit up top and a little leeway in the ankles? Only time will tell, but one thing is for certain: If he wasn’t already, Drake definitely just became a skinny jeans guy.