From Hymnals to Hip-Hop: The Soundtrack of Black Liberation
“The revolution is about to be televised / you picked the right time but the wrong guy.” Fresh off his five-time Grammy win at the 2025 Grammy Awards, these were the words rap legend Kendrick Lamar sent ringing through the stands of a captive audience — which included President Donald Trump — at the LIX Super Bowl. At the top of his game, Mr. Lamar played his own comedy special of sorts. The field, his transformed playground for a scathing political take-down, was decorated in the likeness of a PlayStation controller—a perceived commentary on the modern American experience of Black Americans playing in a system rigged for them to lose in the tournament of life. From Samuel L. Jackson’s reimagined portrayal of “Uncle Sam” to his backup dancers clad in the colors of the American flag splintering across lamp-lit streets as a visual backdrop of division, Lamar’s performance was rife with ironic iconography complementing his lyrical motifs calling for resistance and retribution. Despite elevating himself from the acme of the current cultural zeitgeist to become, perhaps, the music industry’s leading revolutionary, transcending the boundaries of music, it’s possible that some viewers may have missed the nuance of this poetry put to motion. While some level of backlash With Mr. Lamar’s performance was to be expected – even, encouraged – it is a testament to how artistic controversy can ignite a movement.
While each moment in Kendrick Lamar’s thirteen-minute Super Bowl performance is deserving of its own full-length analysis, one lyric in particular demands further exploration. His refer-ence to Gil Scott-Heron’s iconic 1971 poem-turned-song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” is not just a nod to a past era of Black advocacy, but a reaffirmation of music’s long-standing role as a catalyst for change. Scott-Heron’s piece was a critique of media manipulation and political complacency, warning Black Americans that true revolution would not come packaged for mass consumption. Instead, it had to be lived and enacted in the streets, homes, and minds of the oppressed.
Scott-Heron’s message resonated deeply with Black civil rights protesters in the early 1970’s, an era still reeling from the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. As the Civil Rights Movement gave way to the Black Power era, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” became an anthem for those who recognized that mainstream institutions would never willingly broadcast the fight for liberation. It was a call to action, reminding Black Americans that change would not come passively through television screens but through active self-determination.
The idea of music as a subversive force for Black Americans predates Scott-Heron by generations. During slavery, hymnals and spirituals were more than religious expressions; they were coded messages of escape. Songs like “Wade in the Water” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd” contained hidden instructions for navigating the Underground Railroad. Enslaved people, often forbidden from reading or writing, used these songs to communicate the safest routes to freedom. In this way, music became a survival tool, a means of collective defiance and practical liberation.
Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (1939) became one of the most haunting protest songs in American history. Written by Abel Meeropol, the song’s raw depic-tion of lynching turned Holiday into a target for government surveillance. Yet, its power was undeniable. By singing “Strange Fruit,” Holiday forced white audiences to confront the brutal realities of racial violence, exposing the grotesque contradictions of a nation that prided itself on liberty while allowing racial terror to persist. Strange Fruit laid the groundwork for protest music, demonstrating how a single song could shake a nation’s conscience and demand accountability. By the time James Brown released “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” in 1968, the message had shifted from exposing racial atrocities to instilling self-worth and empowerment in Black communities. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and following the assassination of Dr. King, Black Americans needed anthems that affirmed their identity and resilience. Brown’s song, with its infectious groove and direct call for pride in Blackness, became an unofficial anthem of the Black Power movement, reinforcing the idea that music was not just a reaction to repression but a means of shaping cultural consciousness.
This lineage of music as a weapon of civil disobedience continues with Kendrick Lamar, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning album “DAMN.” engages directly with themes of navigating racial identity. Music, particularly in the Black American tradition, reaches beyond entertainment. It has been a mirror reflecting the nation’s failures, a rallying cry for justice, and a roadmap for change. From the coded hymnals of enslaved people to the fiery proclamations of James Brown, from the mournful protest of Billie Holiday to the unfiltered critiques of Gil Scott-Heron, Black music has continuously served as both revelation and revolution. In Lamar’s moment of cultural reckoning on one of the world’s biggest stages, he reminded us that the fight is far from over—and that the revolution, whether televised or not, demands a soundtrack. In echoing Lamar’s final words aimed directly at viewers, it’s time to “turn this TV off.”
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