"It's not a race war!": Asmongold reacts to Pokimane saying "only white people hated" Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance

During his February 13, 2025 Twitch stream, Zack "Asmongold" reacted to Pokimane's take on Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance. The rapper's halftime show has sparked quite some debate online, with many people praising it while others being quite critical. Pokimane had talked about it on her February 10 (2025) broadcast where she made some remarks about "only white people" having hated Kendrick's performance.

At one point, Pokimane read her chat and said:

"'Only white people hated it.' I didn't want to say it. As a white-passing person, I didn't want to say that. You saying that and me repeating that message, I am just going to let that sit."

Asmongold recently reacted to her comments, saying Pokimane was bringing up race, and claimed people should not be talking about it while debating Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance. The streamer even likened it to "a race war":

"She is saying that only white people didn't like the Super Bowl halftime show. She read chat? She obviously agrees with it. I don't know why people have to turn everything into a race war. There is people who just don't like Kendrick Lamar. Obviously, not every black person listens to Kendrick Lamar. A lot of people who listen to Kendrick Lamar are not black. It's not a race war!"

---

"He absolutely deserved the halftime show": Asmongold gives his opinion on Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance while reacting to Pokimane

Asmongold brought up the topic of the Super Bowl halftime show on his stream and noted how "opinionated" some people had been about it. He also played a clip from Pokimane's stream and commented on the same:

"Now, I saw a bit of the Super Bowl halftime show. I thought it was fine. People get so opinionated about this. Listen to this."

Asmongold (who recently got into a lot of controversy for his take on immigration) initially claimed that he thought Kendrick Lamar "absolutely deserved" to be doing the Super Bowl halftime show and even brought up the rapper's Spotify record:

"I think he absolutely deserved the halftime show. I mean, he is a massive, massive musician. You look, look at this. Kendrick Lamar is the first rapper to cross 90 million monthly listeners on Spotify."

He also noted that there was nothing wrong with not liking his music:

"'He's overrated.' See, here's the thing. There is nothing wrong with not liking Kendrick Lamar."

After watching Pokimane's take on the discourse surrounding the Super Bowl halftime show, Asmongold went on to push back against racializing the debate while acknowledging racism:

"Like, yeah, I am sure there are some people that do not like Kendrick Lamar, they don't like black people. But are we really going to use that as the default? What is this? This is so weird. What is this? Why are people trying to make a race war over the halftime show? What is that? What is going on?"

Much like Asmongold's criticism of Pokimane's remark, Adin Ross has also called out the Moroccan-Canadian Twitch streamer and claimed that she only goes after white people, after she praised Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance.