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New Lyrics for Old People with Offset & Cardi B

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Offset and Cardi B sat down with Jimmy Kimmel, and by the end of it, “Clout” sounded like something you’d hear at a church potluck.

On the July 17, 2019 episode of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the married hip-hop stars stopped by for another round of the show’s recurring bit “New Lyrics for Old People,” a sketch built around translating rap slang into the kind of language a grandparent could nod along to. This time the target was “Clout,” Offset and Cardi B’s collaborative single, and Kimmel treated every line like it needed a legal disclaimer for anyone over 65.

• The July 17, 2019 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” brought Offset and Cardi B on for a new installment of “New Lyrics for Old People.”
• The segment focused on “Clout,” the couple’s collaborative track and the second single from Offset’s solo album “Father of 4,” released in early 2019.
• Kimmel translated bars about street credibility, wealth, and calling out social-media clout-chasers into prim, literal language, and the couple followed the sketch with a live performance of the song.

The Setup Behind the Bit

“New Lyrics for Old People” has become one of Kimmel’s go-to formats for musical guests, and the mechanics are simple: the artist reads a verse straight, then Kimmel restates it in the driest, most formal English possible, as if he’s explaining slang to someone hearing it for the first time. Offset and Cardi B sat beside the host in the studio and worked through their own verses from “Clout” while Kimmel supplied the deadpan translations line by line.

The joke lands because “Clout” is built on exactly the kind of language the bit is designed to flatten — flexing, calling out posers, and drawing a line between people who actually have money and status versus people performing it for likes. That contrast between the song’s swagger and Kimmel’s buttoned-up delivery is the entire engine of the sketch.

Translating “Clout” Line by Line

Offset and Cardi B recited bars centered on street credibility and wealth, and Kimmel reframed each one into senior-friendly terms — softening the flex talk and the shots at clout-chasers into polite, literal restatements that stripped out the slang entirely. The back-and-forth format let both artists play along with their own writing being reinterpreted in real time, which is where most of the segment’s laughs came from.

Translating rap’s flex culture into polite dinner-table English is the whole bit — and hearing Cardi B’s own bars come back to her that way never stops being funny.

“Clout” itself had already done its job commercially by the time the couple sat down with Kimmel — it arrived as the follow-up single from “Father of 4,” the solo album Offset put out earlier in 2019, and gave the couple another radio-friendly duet to run alongside their respective solo catalogs.

The Live Performance

Beyond the comedy segment, Offset and Cardi B closed out their “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” appearance with a live rendition of “Clout,” giving the late-night audience the unfiltered version right after watching it get sanitized for grandparents. Pairing a scripted comedy bit with a straight musical performance is a familiar Kimmel formula for promotional stops, and it let the couple sell the song twice in the same segment — once as a punchline, once as the record itself.

Enduring Effectiveness of the Format

Kimmel has run variations of “New Lyrics for Old People” with plenty of other artists, and the appeal is the same every time: pairing an artist’s actual persona against Kimmel’s exaggeratedly formal delivery. With Offset and Cardi B specifically, the bit works because both of them are known for blunt, confident bars — hearing that swagger get neutered into polite phrasing is a sharper joke than it would be with a less brash song. It’s the same reason clips like this tend to travel well online, sitting alongside other late-night musical bits and official rap videos that circulate in the same corners of YouTube, including segments built around live TV musical moments that didn’t go quite as smoothly, or straight studio releases like the official video drops from other chart-topping rap acts.

For Offset and Cardi B, the Kimmel stop was a quick, low-stakes promotional beat wedged between bigger moves for both of their careers that summer — Offset still riding “Father of 4” and Cardi B juggling her own solo schedule. The bit did what these segments are built to do: get “Clout” back in front of a late-night audience, get a laugh, and get out before the joke wears thin.