Kendrick Lamar's performance at the 2016 Grammy Awards along with the performance by Beyoncé at Super Bowl 50 and have made headlines. Videos of both performances are below. Whose performance do you think was more powerful? JUMP IN & vote now!
Beyoncé stole the show at Super Bowl 50 and made a major political statement in front of 112 million people by singing her new song Formation with a performance that featured dancers in Black Panther berets performing black power salutes and arranging themselves into the letter “X” for Malcolm X. The Guardian's Barbara Ellen called the #blacklivesmatter inspired song and video: "an education, if you will, on the black American experience, past and present." Needless to say, the performance got a bit of backlash.
ICYMI, Kendrick Lamar lit up the 2016 Grammy Awards. Nate Scott of USA Today described the performance as "a piece of performance art, a pyrotechnics show, and an outright challenge to white America." The performance started with imagery of prison, morphed into one out of Africa, and ended with the word Compton over an image of Africa. Lamar performed Blacker The Berry and Alright, a rallying song for the #blacklivesmatter movement, with new material that referenced February 26, 2012 (when Trayvon Martin was shot) a day he said: “I lost my life too … [it] set us back another 400 years.”