Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Revolution Was Live

The man called it. He FUCKING CALLED it. The revolution, as Gil Scott-Heron told us back in 1970, will not be televised. The revolution will be LIVE. Don’t get it twisted — he wasn’t talking about the limits of your black-and-white Zenith TV set. No, he was laying down a truth so heavy it could crack concrete. Gil’s message was a warning: the real work of change doesn’t happen in the warm glow of a screen while you're stuffing your face with Cheetos. The revolution? It’s messy, it’s in your face, and it’s often off-camera.

Then came February 9, 2025. Kendrick Lamar hit the Super Bowl halftime stage in New Orleans like a thunderclap, a man with a mission and the swagger to back it up. The first solo hip-hop artist to headline the event, Kendrick didn’t just perform; he testified. The man brought fire to one of the most sanitized spectacles in America, a place where beer ads are treated like scripture and the game is more background noise than a reason to gather.

With tracks like Humble and DNA, Kendrick turned a football halftime show into a master class on cultural resistance. Samuel L. Jackson showed up dressed like Uncle Sam and kicked things off with a monologue sharp enough to cut glass. SZA appeared, lending her voice to a moment that felt less like a show and more like a sermon delivered with beats. This moved beyond entertainment; it was a reckoning.

Now, plenty of melanin-deficient folks have Facebook and X pulled up crying about the show saying, “Wait a minute, didn’t Gil Scott-Heron say the revolution won’t be televised?” Actually, no. Who the fuck am I kidding. Most of them don’t know the track at all. And here’s Kendrick, throwing a revolution in prime time with 100 million people watching. Yeah, but here’s the twist — Gil wasn’t saying cameras couldn’t capture a moment. He was saying the revolution is bigger than the moment. It’s the aftershock, the ripple effects, the conversations that happen when the lights go out and the camera crews pack up.

The revolution is about to be televised, you picked the right time, but the wrong guy.
- Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick knows this. He didn’t serve up an easy-to-swallow pill for mass consumption. He brought the revolution to the folks at home, right in the middle of their nachos and cheap beer, and dared them to chew on it. His performance wasn’t the revolution itself; it was a spark, a clarion call for anyone paying attention.

Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was a love letter to the unseen — the marches, the quiet defiance, the soul-searching that happens far from the stage. Kendrick, in his own way, carried that torch. By the time he finished his set, the Super Bowl wasn’t just a game anymore. It became a mirror, showing America all its beauty and all its scars, with a Black Uncle Sam hosting the festivities.

But mirrors don’t fix a GOTDAMNED thing. They just show you what’s there. Kendrick didn’t stop the show to solve systemic racism or end police brutality. He can’t do that. What he did was hold up that mirror and say, “Look at yourself, America. What are you going to do about it?”

And that’s where Gil and Kendrick intersect. The revolution might not be televised, but it doesn’t mean it can’t pass through your TV set on its way to shaking you up. Gil warned us that no screen, no matter how high-definition, can show you the blood, sweat, and tears of real change. Kendrick reminded us that sometimes, a spark can ignite a fire — even if you saw it first during a commercial break.

So, here we are, left with this truth: the revolution is always in the people, in their hearts, in their hands, and in their voices. Whether it’s Gil strumming a poetic protest or Kendrick spitting fire on a Super Bowl stage, the message stays the same. The revolution won’t be televised — but it sure as hell can be kickstarted on live TV. And the rest? That’s up to you.

As for me, I’m still listening to Gil’s records and the lectures from Professor Chuck D.