Kendrick Lamar has decision to make on 'controversial' lyric ahead of Super Bowl half-time show

Rapper Kendrick Lamar will be performing in the famous half-time show of the Super Bowl but could have a major decision to make should he perform one of his songs with a 'controversial' lyric.

Super Bowl LIX takes place this weekend with the Kansas City Chiefs taking on the Philadelphia Eagles at the Caesars Superdrome in New Orleans.

The encounter is a direct rematch of Super Bowl LVII which the Chiefs won and it will see them aim to win their third NFL Super Bowl title on the bounce.

The Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 last year and emerged on top against the Eagles 38-35 the season before.

Every year, the game's half-time show is almost as talked about as the Super Bowl itself as excitement builds to see which stars will be performing.

Lamar is among the headliners of this year's show and will be joined by SZA, with no other acts confirmed as of yet.

But it will not be the maiden time Lamar has performed at the Super Bowl half-time show, as he co-headlined the LVI performance back in 2022 along with Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige in the first event to be focused entirely around hip hop music.

Kendrick Lamar. (Image: Getty)

On that occasion in 2022, Dr Dre went against the NFL's request to remove the line 'still not loving police' from his performance of 'Still D.R.E.' and it was said to leave NFL officials 'uncomfortable' that the lyric remained and was performed live.

And it is a scenario which Lamar could be confronted with this weekend, should he opt to perform one of his hits which has a similar lyric included.

There is speculation over which songs Lamar could perform at the half-time show and one of these could be the hit 'Alright', which featured on his third studio album back in 2015 To Pimp a Butterfly.

The song as originally recorded includes the lyric 'and we hate po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho'.

Lamar did perform this song when he appeared in the 2022 Super Bowl half-time show, but on that occasion he missed out that key lyric.

It remains to be seen if Lamar will perform this hit again and, if so, if he will adopt the same approach he did back in 2022, or take the view that Dr Dre did with his own controversial lyric and perform the song as it was originally recorded.