On February 9, 2025, Kendrick Lamar headlined the Super Bowl LIX halftime show at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans — and turned the biggest stage in American entertainment into a Compton victory lap. The centerpiece was "Not Like Us," his Grammy-sweeping diss track aimed at Drake, and the moment everyone is still talking about: a crip walk performed live in front of roughly 133 million viewers.

The Kendrick Lamar crip walk moment was not just a dance. It was a statement about who belongs to West Coast culture and who doesn't — the exact argument "Not Like Us" makes in its lyrics. This article explains why the crip walk was there, what it meant, who actually performed it, the Drake feud context behind it, and why it became the biggest mainstream crip walk moment in over a decade.

What Happened: The Crip Walk During "Not Like Us"

Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX set was built like a piece of theater. Samuel L. Jackson appeared as a satirical "Uncle Sam" narrator. SZA joined for "luther" and "All the Stars." Mustard, the producer behind "Not Like Us," made an appearance. But the night was always building toward one song.

When Lamar finally teased the diss track, he broke the fourth wall: "I wanna play their favorite song, but you know they love to sue." It was a direct wink at the legal storm surrounding "Not Like Us." Then he played it anyway — with the track's most explosive line censored for broadcast.

As the beat dropped, the camera cut to a side platform where Serena Williams appeared and broke into a clean, deliberate crip walk. The tennis legend — like Lamar, a Compton native — delivered the visual centerpiece of the entire performance. The internet did the rest. Within hours, the clip was everywhere.

So Did Kendrick Lamar Crip Walk Himself?

This is the most common point of confusion. Searches for "Kendrick Lamar crip walk" spiked after the show, but Lamar himself did not perform the dance on stage. He orchestrated the moment and built the cultural frame around it — but the crip walk belonged to Serena Williams. Her full story, including her famous 2012 Olympics performance, is covered in our dedicated guide to Serena Williams' crip walk.

That distinction matters, because the genius of the moment was in the casting. Lamar didn't need to dance. He needed the right person from the right place to do it for him — and that is exactly what made it land.

Why Did Kendrick Lamar Crip Walk Feature in the Show?

To understand why the crip walk appeared at all, you have to understand where Kendrick Lamar comes from and what "Not Like Us" is actually about.

Compton Is the Whole Point

Kendrick Lamar was born and raised in Compton, California — the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the Crip Walk originated in the 1970s. His entire catalog, from good kid, m.A.A.d city to To Pimp a Butterfly, is steeped in the specific geography, language, and culture of that place.

For Lamar, the crip walk is not a costume he puts on for a show. It is part of the cultural vocabulary of his hometown — the same way it was for Serena Williams when she did it at the Olympics, and the way it was for Snoop Dogg when he carried the dance to global fame across three decades.

"Not Like Us" Is About Belonging

The song at the heart of the performance is, at its core, an argument about authenticity. "Not Like Us" draws a hard line between insiders and outsiders — between people who are genuinely part of West Coast and Los Angeles culture, and Drake, whom Lamar frames as a tourist appropriating it.

Put a Compton-born dance on the world's biggest stage during that song, and the message writes itself: this is what "us" looks like. The crip walk became the visual proof of the lyric. It said, without a single extra word, that this culture is real, it is rooted in a specific place, and it cannot be borrowed.

The Drake Feud Context Behind the Crip Walk

You cannot separate the crip walk from the Drake feud, because the feud is the reason "Not Like Us" exists. The 2024 battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake was the most consequential rap beef in years, producing a string of diss tracks that culminated in "Not Like Us" — a song that dominated charts, swept the Grammys, and reframed the entire rivalry.

Performing that specific song at the Super Bowl was already a provocation. But the choice of Serena Williams as the dancer added a second, sharper layer.

The Serena–Drake Subtext

Williams and Drake have a complicated history. Drake referenced her in his 2013 track "Worst Behavior," and again in his 2022 song "Middle of the Ocean," where he took a shot at her husband, tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, calling him a "groupie." For Williams to surface during a Drake diss track — crip walking, no less — read to many fans as a pointed personal co-sign of Lamar over Drake.

So the crip walk operated on several frequencies at once:

• Hometown pride: two Compton natives, on the biggest stage on Earth, performing a dance born in their neighborhood.
• The "Not Like Us" thesis: a visual demonstration of authentic West Coast culture that Drake, by the song's logic, is locked out of.
• Personal history: Williams' own past friction with Drake gave her cameo an extra edge that fans immediately picked up on.

"It was a diss, a celebration, and a homecoming all at once. Kendrick didn't have to say a word — he just let Compton dance."

— Widely shared sentiment across hip-hop media after Super Bowl LIX

Was the Crip Walk at the Super Bowl Controversial?

Given the dance's history, many expected backlash. It barely came.

When Serena Williams crip walked at the 2012 London Olympics, major outlets ran segments asking whether a "gang dance" belonged on Wimbledon's Centre Court. The 2025 Super Bowl moment landed in a completely different cultural climate. By then, the public conversation about whether the crip walk is offensive or illegal had largely resolved in favor of seeing it as cultural expression rather than gang signaling.

Several factors kept the 2025 crip walk in the "celebrated" column:

• Authenticity: both Lamar and Williams are genuinely from Compton. Nobody could credibly accuse them of appropriating their own culture.
• Snoop's precedent: Snoop Dogg had already crip walked at the 2022 Super Bowl LVI halftime show to near-universal acclaim, normalizing the dance on that stage.
• The framing: the dance was clearly a celebration tied to "Not Like Us," not a provocation aimed at the broader audience.

A handful of commentators raised the old questions, but they were drowned out. The dominant reaction was delight — and a surge of curiosity about the dance itself.

How to Crip Walk Like the Super Bowl Performance

After the show, searches for how to do the crip walk spiked. The version Serena Williams performed was the classic foundation: a tight, controlled sequence of heel-and-toe footwork that traces a "V" shape and shuffles the feet in quick, rhythmic steps.

The basics break down into a few core movements:

• The V-step: the heel-to-toe pivot that opens and closes the feet into a V shape — the signature look of the dance.
• The shuffle: quick, light alternating steps that keep the rhythm moving.
• The heel-toe: the snapping coordination between heel and toe that gives the C-Walk its crisp, percussive feel.

If you want to actually learn the footwork step by step, our crip walk tutorials break down each move with practice tips. The Super Bowl version looked effortless precisely because the fundamentals are simple — it is the clean, confident execution that sells it.

Super Bowl LIX Crip Walk Moment: Timeline

Why This Was the Biggest Crip Walk Moment in a Decade

The crip walk has had major mainstream moments before — Snoop Dogg's decades of performances, Serena's Olympics celebration, viral TikTok trends. But the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl crip walk hit differently for a few reasons.

The Audience Was Unmatched

At roughly 133 million U.S. viewers, Super Bowl LIX was one of the most-watched broadcasts in American television history. No single crip walk performance had ever reached that many people in one instant. The dance went from a regional cultural artifact to a shared national moment in the span of a few seconds.

The Layers Made It Sticky

A simple dance can be forgotten. A dance loaded with meaning — Compton pride, the Drake feud, Serena's personal history, the "Not Like Us" thesis — becomes a cultural event. That density is exactly why people were still dissecting the moment for weeks afterward, and why it drove a measurable spike in curiosity about the dance's history and culture.

It Completed a Journey

From its 1970s Compton origins to Snoop's music videos to Serena's Olympics to the Super Bowl stage, the crip walk has spent fifty years traveling from the margins to the absolute center of American culture. When Kendrick Lamar put it inside the most-watched performance of the year, that journey reached its peak.

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