Kai Cenat said the audience was quiet during Kendrick Lamar's Halftime Show performance at the Super Bowl and believes the NFL added crowd noise to the live broadcast.
While rewatching the performance during a recent stream on Twitch, Cenat paused to tell his audience that he didn't hear the crowd noise that appeared on the broadcast version. "Oh my God, they [added] sound effects to the NFL shit, oh my fucking God," he said. "Right, so right here, there was no sound. I just heard crowd sounds, oh my life, right here, there was no sounds. Fuck, they add crowd effects? I did not know that."
During another portion of the stream, he said that anyone else who was there would tell you something similar. "Crowd was making no noise," he said. "I'm just being honest. I was there." He added that the crowd was loud, however, when Kendrick showed up at the start of the performance, when Samuel L. Jackson introduced the show as Uncle Sam, when SZA joined for a few songs, and when he performed "Not Like Us."
When giving his opinion on the show, he said that Kendrick should have switched out some of the songs. "The crowd was not good. They was just not fucking with the performance, like, up until 'Not Like Us,'" he continued. "But what I will say is, the symbolism behind that performance was top tier. I'm not gonna lie. I paid attention to, like, the sets."
Trading card and hip-hop news aggregator account Rapcrd shared a clip of Cenat claiming the NFL added crowd noise, and Drake dropped a like on the post. This is the closest we've gotten to a response from Drizzy outside of him posting a picture of him with Serena Williams' former agent Jill Smoller.
While Cenat had a mixed opinion on the performance, another popular streamer was considerably more harsh. Plaqueboymax, who recently defended Drake and said he doesn't like the music industry's "weird" treatment of the Canadian rapper, shared a vlog of his trip to watch the Super Bowl and appeared less than enthused by K Dot.
"Whether I like it or not, Kendrick Lamar will perform here," he said, later shaking his head and appearing to send a DM to Drake, which read, "aye this performance ass big bruh u good." He later expanded on his criticism and said Kendrick should've performed some of his older material and not let his career be defined by the beef with Drake. He also said the crowd erupted when "Not Like Us" came on, though. "N***as was singing that 'A minor' shit like a bitch," he said.
Twitch streamer Pokimane, meanwhile, suggested that most of the criticism for the performance appeared to be coming from white men. "I feel like if you watched his performance and really took it in, you'd be like ‘There are some underlying messages that the performance is trying to convey, especially during Black History Month,'" she said.
Countless celebrities praised the performance online, including Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg, Ben Stiller, and K Dot's longtime collaborator Jay Rock. Even self-admitted "Nazi" Ye, formerly Kanye West, said he "really loved the show." When Kevin Durant was asked for his thoughts on the show, though, he simply replied, "It meant nothing to me."
