King Clout by Observe since ‘98

Money, fame, power, sex and the end of the world as we know it. Welcome to the Kingdom of Clout.

"Over the course of the last few years, the Wisconsin producer Observe Since ‘98 has become well-known for savvy collaborative projects like this year’s excellent Le Dernier Royaume—which featured verses from marquee names in underground hip-hop. Those albums loom so large it’s easy to forget that he began his career with a series of instrumental LPs, a format he’s continued to dip in and out of over the last 23 years. His latest, King Clout, is his first instrumental album in four years, and is also one of his best. The album attacks the feedback loop of internet fame, and the way artists can become so obsessed with achieving notoriety through a series of spotlight-grabbing stunts, they forget entirely about producing quality work. He gets his message across via pointed song titles—”The Pursuit of Happiness (and a Blue Checkmark)”; “A Life for a Like”—and well-placed samples from news reports about social media influencers. But as always, the beats are the star attraction: Observe has a knack for finding obscure sources—old French yé-yé records, Italian classical music—and flipping them to create a grim, grimy atmosphere that bypasses the same familiar “dusty crate-digging” approach to become something more like world-building. Listen to “E-Commerce,” the way he splices and loops two vocal bars from a French pop record to create an atmosphere of melancholy, or how the slowed-down exotica that backdrops “Feedback Loops” makes it sound like it’s being beamed in from Mars via transistor radio. The cover art—someone taking a photo of a panting in a museum with their iPhone—just drives the point home even further. King Clout is a bleak message from a world that values simulacra over identity, with suitably stark beats to match."

–J. Edward Keyes (credit. Bandcamp Daily)

Producer and owner at Loretta Records.