Music

Kendrick Lamar's 'po-po' lyric missing during Super Bowl halftime show

But Dr. Dre's anti-police lyric during "Still D.R.E." was intact.

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Published on February 13, 2022 09:35PM EST

During Sunday's impressive and nostalgic Super Bowl halftime show — featuring stadium-shaking performances from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar — viewers noticed something frustrating that happened in Lamar's portion of the rap and R&B medley.

While the rapper was performing his iconic song "Alright," a powerful anthem protesting police violence against Black people, the end of the lyric "And we hate po-po" was noticeably dropped. While Lamar and the rest of the performers had been self-censoring some words throughout all their songs, it was unclear if Lamar did say the words "po-po" and the sound cut out during that exact moment as the camera was not on his face in that instance, making it hard to tell if it was bleeped or self-censored. The full lyric is, "Lookin' at the world like, Where do we go? And we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure."

However, during Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's performance of "Still D.R.E.," Dre's anti-police lyric, "Still not loving police," was audible.

The super-sized halftime show was put together by Pepsi, the NFL, and Jay-Z's Roc Nation. It also marked a historic moment as ASL performers were featured in the big game's halftime show for the first time ever with famed deaf musicians Warren "Wawa" Snipe and Sean Forbes performing the lyrics in American Sign Language.

Super Bowl LVI aired live from Los Angeles' new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Follow all of EW's Super Bowl coverage here.

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