Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show: Bootcut jeans, Serena Williams, song reactions

On Thursday, days ahead of the show, an audio track featuring new vocals that sounded like Kendrick Lamar was shared online by a social media fan page of DJ Akademiks, an American podcaster and internet personality, which claimed it was a leaked setlist from Lamar’s upcoming Super Bowl performance. As fans debated the veracity of the seemingly leaked recording, posts containing the audio were quickly taken down due to copyright enforcement, raising eyebrows within the hip-hop community.

Plot twist — most of the leaked setlist turned out to be true.

When Lamar hit the stage, his set list matched almost exactly with the leaked version, outside of a few cosmetic changes. (Samuel L. Jackson, appearing as Uncle Sam, the event’s emcee, was not included in the leak.)

Akademiks’ involvement in the leak is far from surprising for those aware of his connection to Drake. The podcaster is an avid Drake fan and has been used by Drake to send messages to his fanbase. Akademiks was also notably named in one of Lamar’s Drake disses, “6:16 in LA”, with the Compton rapper calling the journalist “compromised”.

Akademiks later took to Instagram “apologizing” for revealing the setlist ahead of time — claiming he did so hoping Kendrick would “change the songs.