I did not know 80% of the songs that Kendrick Lamar performed during Sunday’s visually arresting and symbolically brilliant Super Bowl halftime show. I have long been an admirer of his thoughtful lyricism and bold creativity that makes him the perfect poet for these times, as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner.

I could not rap along like my kid and his friend could — with the exception, of course, of the brutal musical murder that is “Not Like Us,” a song so powerful that it made Drake, its subject, seemingly flee halfway across the world to Australia. Everybody in the stadium seemed to know the lyrics to that one, probably to Drake’s chagrin. Lamar even invited Serena Williams, the Canadian rapper’s ex, to crip walk along to the music. Yikes. If somebody went through that much effort to school me, I’d be drowning my sorrows in a jar of Vegemite and crying to the nearest koala.

Still, my unfamiliarity with Lamar’s songs did not stop me from understanding immediately the timeliness of the images and the lyrics. These were protest songs spoken directly to the powerful in the stands. That was brave. That was art. The kids gleefully dancing in my living room were more of the audience aesthetically, but the show was exciting and memorable, and I was deeply touched, regardless of whether it was for me.

The same can not be said for a whole lot of Super Bowl viewers who vehemently hated every second of it, even the ones that didn’t seem to have watched it. They hate hip-hop. They don’t know the words. They were bored. It wasn’t family-friendly. Halftime shows should be for everyone.

What that means, of course, that halftime shows should be for them. That’s what they’re used to. And when it’s not, they do not like it.

I have no problems with people who do not like hip-hop, or who, like me, don’t know many of Lamar’s songs. I understand that some were unable to catch some of the lyrics because of the less-than-crisp audio, and it would have been in keeping with Super Bowl tradition to have pyrotechnics, acrobats or superstars rollerskating across a stage. Maybe a few more cool surprise celebrity guests, besides SZA, Williams, and Samuel L. Jackson as a version of Uncle Sam, would have been fun.

But bored, perhaps, is the wrong word for a show with dancing Black men forming an American flag, in sort of a modern visual take on Langston Hughes’ “I, Too,” demanding their place in this country’s history that has long othered them. There was nothing unclear about a Black Uncle Sam, the traditional personification of America, pleading with Lamar not to upset people.

It’s all there, if you take time to understand it. But there are a lot of people who are not only unwilling to do any work to learn about things that might challenge them, but who adamantly refuse to believe that they should have to. The world is not about your comfort, as much as you’ve been led to believe that.

It’s not always going to be about you. As a Black American (and yes, here I go again), I am used to most things not being about me. Look at the last couple decades of halftime performances. You’re lying if you think the performance by Travis Tritt and The Judds was for “everyone,” because everyone doesn’t like country music. Ditto The Rolling Stones or Katy Perry.

To some people, “everyone” seems to mean “people I think are important because people like me know who they are.” Be honest: there was nothing family-friendly about Britney Spears gyrating in tight pants or Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake singing “gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” even before the wardrobe malfunction.

And we aren’t even going to get into the blatant racism of some of the comments I read, like the one that called Lamar a thug. I asked that person to specifically explain why he would call the rapper that. In detail. I have not heard back.

It’s OK not to like a genre. It’s OK to have changed the channel, or taken that time to change out the chips on your party platter. Some online have slyly suggested that next year is going be all hymns and country, so if that’s more of your thing, you’ll probably enjoy that.

I know that I was pleased to have sat on my couch and learned something about an artist I didn’t know as much about as I’d like to. I believe I would have missed something seismic had I skipped it. I feel I am better for it.

It’s OK if you don’t. Because it wasn’t for you.