Photo Credit: Kendrick Lamar by Batiste Safont / CC by 4.0
Kendrick Lamar has created the title track for ‘Captain America: Brave New World,’ hot on the heels of his Super Bowl halftime performance.
This isn’t Kendrick’s first stunt with Marvel — he oversaw the Black Panther soundtrack back in 2018, and he’s had other songs appear in a spattering of Marvel properties. But contributing new music to the superhero entertainment company’s latest flick on the heels of his Super Bowl halftime victory lap is well-timed.
Captain America: Brave New World star Anthony Mackie, whose character Sam Wilson (Falcon) is now Captain America, broke the news in an interview about the film with Entertainment Tonight. “Kendrick did the title song for my movie,” he said. “Hopefully that’s not supposed to be a surprise,” Mackie quipped after the reveal.
The film comes out this Friday (February 14), and Lamar’s involvement hadn’t been mentioned until Mackie’s interview, so perhaps it was intended to be a surprise. The actor didn’t reveal any other details about the track, but he mentioned how excited he was before praising “the beauty and mastery of [Lamar’s] craft.”
Kendrick Lamar’s track, “N95,” was also featured in a teaser trailer for the new film — but given Mackie’s remark about spoiling the surprise, it appears there really is a new song in the pipeline.
Lamar’s new song will mark his first solo track of 2025, since the surprise release of his sixth studio album, GNX, in November. The album followed the immense success of his smash hit Drake-diss track, “Not Like Us.” The song just won five Grammys and served as the main course of his headlining Super Bowl halftime performance last weekend. His halftime show just broke records to become the most watched Super Bowl show in history, with a 3% rise over Usher’s set in 2024.
The new Captain America film sees Anthony Mackie’s character taking up the mantle from Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers in the first three films. It also stars Harrison Ford, Giancarlo Esposito, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, and Tim Blake Nelson.