As though wanting to put to bed (no pun intended) any rumors of further strife between them after his infidelity bender, Offset’s aim with the video for “Clout” featuring Cardi B seems to be to iterate that if you’re kinky enough, one woman is sufficient. That said, Offset begins his manifesto about how people will do anything for clout (ergo they should get off his and Cardi’s shared dick about being famous and rich) by sitting at a canary yellow piano and wearing something of a more futuristic version of the Jason mask (to pay homage to the lyric, “Mask on her face, Jason,” obviously).
We zoom in on this scene through the Tik Tok app (which Ciara also makes use of in her latest video, “Thinkin’ Bout You“), perhaps an unwitting statement on how social media is the way that most plebes attempt to make a clout grab. Offset soon rises from his piano (though he will never compare to Chloe Flower at Cardi’s Grammy performance) to segue into scenes of himself either in a mirrored room creating infinite Offsets that no one clout-seeker (read: groupie “crying pregnancy,” as it were) could ever take down or against a vibrant yellow backdrop that clearly rips off the effect from the early iPod commercials.
Sawing a black cake with a yellow interior (a strange homage to Wiz Khalifa?) at one point in his Jason mask once again, this is all just a slow build to Cardi appearing in the same spaces with him to make things a bit more sexual (which comes at an opportune–or maybe inopportune time–for her to seem slightly less scary to men crying rape).
To do so, she puts on some of the more high-tech latex gear she probably wishes she could have actually used during her stripping days, some Dr. Seuss-structured thigh-high boots and something like a latex hat that her ponytail can pop through. When she’s not staring at herself with just as much enjoyment in the mirror as Offset is at himself, she can be found in a mound of yellow balls (though not an actual ball pit). The symbolism here being, what, she has everyone by the balls? At least they’re not orange ones, for that might infer Trump actually has any.
Offset is sure to iterate that the video was creative directed by himself (and Joseph Desrosiers Jr.) before the title card that mentions “Directed by Daniel Russell.” Some dangerous Kanye-veering territory. For narcissism always starts out small before it goes psycho. Thus, it seems foretelling for him to say, “My bitch on your ass, Kim K/No disrespect/The nigga be tripping, but we love Ye.” Other somewhat cringey lyrics veering on megalomania include, “Oh, I took the crown off the king like Mike did Elvis (oh, I took it).” A bold comparison in the present moment.
Cardi, too, makes her fair share of allusions, including bitches being trash: Oscar the Grouch. Or Brandy: they wanna be down. Alas, Cardi’s clout in this instant is about as good as Brandy’s, for if she had any, she might have been able to actually make it so that there wasn’t another “random bitch” (as she calls them in “Be Careful“) in the tableau, doing her own little dance of seduction. But alas, this video is all about Offset’s dreams being realized. Minus the part where he was spoon-fed the line, “Shorty DM me, I’m straight (I’m straight)/I’m not gon’ bite on the bait.” At least not with the temporary distractions of a motorcycle (which he rides in circles on his yellow floor to leave black tire marks) and Cardi’s smackable derrière.
