Lausse the Cat; Something about Rasputin and Politics Today
Exploring a mysterious, very talented young British hip-hop artist and some ideas drawn from a 1912 journalist's quote about another mysterious figure: Rasputin
An Artist to Check Out: Lausse the Cat
One of the most exciting parts about discovering a new, relatively unknown musical artist is that you can go through their entire discography and read everything available about them online pretty easily. At the point that an artist has fewer than ten songs and 200,000 weekly listeners on Spotify, chances are only a few articles will have been written about them, they will not have a Wikipedia page, and they may have 1-2 music videos on YouTube. You can quickly digest their entire online persona.
When you have such mastery over an artist’s digital presence, every new development becomes exciting. Each new song or detail they then drop online adds to the still-forming picture of the artist. The downside of this experience, however, is that sometimes an artist goes dark. You follow everything they do and listen to all their music, falling deeper and deeper into their character and artistry, but sometimes they just cease production. They did not reach a stage of their career that they must continue producing, so they can just drop off without major consequence. You look for signs of creative life, but often nothing presents itself for a couple years. After a bit more time passes, you begin to wonder whether you’ll never get anything new from that musician again.
This is the case with Lausse the Cat. A British artist who originally started putting songs on SoundCloud as Blu Man, Lausse started posting music onto the platform under his current moniker more than five years ago. The first songs released as Lausse the Cat, such as “wag1 pelican” and “alone together,” give a taste of Lausse as an artist. The production is solid with soft jazzy beats, presenting a highly introspective, downcast individual. It is soft British rap, sonically similar to other young English hip-hop artists – Finn Foxell, Nix Northwest, and Kofi Stone – of the burgeoning lo-fi British hip-hop scene who began releasing music at around the same time.
In 2018, Lausse released his first full length project, The Girl, the Cat, and the Tree. The album, at just under 22 minutes, is short, but it is an album in the truest sense. The whole work flows together and tells a complete story, piece by piece, about a depressed figure meandering around Leeds, pondering his life, forced to confront his decisions and the causes of these feelings. At the core of the album lie two songs that capture Lausse’s persona. The first, “Fuccboi Lullaby”, tells the tale of Lausse meeting a girl at a party, having a month-long fling, and ultimately abruptly ditching her once the relationship goes stale. In the next song, “A Cat’s Demise”, he confronts his actions, trying to justify them by saying he “had the heart to mend” but “can’t feel a thing.” The explanations don’t give him any reprieve, and he is left to deal with his guilt over his deeds. The album weaves together multiple characters, a variety of folktale-inspired themes, some impressive French verses, and a real representation of depression and alcoholism. By the end of the album, Lausse has served up a complete, pensive story about his personal struggles and difficulties. (Read more complete walkthroughs of the album here and here.)
Lausse’s most popular song is not off the album, but it is an 8 minute single titled “Redstripe Rhapsody.” Sampling an acoustic version of Drake’s “Passionfruit” and Tyler, the Creator’s “911/Mr. Lonely,” the album maintains the folktale-like themes of his full-length project. The song starts with an introduction of the mellow vibe in the Hyde Park area of Leeds, is interrupted by a Camelot-like introduction to a party, and ends with him waking up in the bed of a girl he’d met the night prior. The song seamlessly weaves together influences of low-fi British rap, soft-house music, and recreations of some of the most popular recent songs in American hip-hop. Just as he does on his full-length project, Lausse melds together all these different sounds while also sharing a complete, contemplative narrative. All these elements blend to create a truly idiosyncratic final product.
Beyond the songs, Lausse has created his own unique aesthetic. He has fully leaned into the black cat as his own personal avatar. The cat is not just a name but an identity. Lyrics related to felinity are dispersed throughout his music (“If I-A-M stood for ‘I Am A Monster’, Then guess I could be an IAMS cat”). His cover art and online persona utilize the cat imagery to align with his musical identity, as he consistently paints the cat as a lonely, solitary figure sitting isolated in the dark. When performing on stage, he wears a cat mask. In his only music video online– for ““Motor City” – he wears a cat mask.
The mask-wearing brings us to the most intriguing element of the artist. No one seems to know who he really is. All we really know about him is that he is friends with others in the lo-fi British hip-hop scene, particularly Nix Northwest and B-ahwe. There is no trace of his actual name online nor are there any pictures of him without the mask. His Instagram, with more than 25k followers (one of which is Drake), labels him “Prince of Cats, Lord of Bins.” It has only two posts. They are drawings of cats.
Despite the facelessness of the artist, he has accumulated quite the online following. He has more than 300,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and 7 of his 10 songs have more than a million listens, with the most popular – “Redstripe Rhapsody” – topping out at more than 14 million listens. For four years, fans have been clamoring for new music from Lausse. In the subreddit devoted to him, r/LausseTheCat, fans have remained active for years.
There are two main categories of posts in the subreddit. The first are fans aiming to demonstrate their loyalty to Lausse through pictures of their Lausse the Cat tattoos, screenshots of their Spotify wrapped with Lausse’s songs at the top, and hopeful messages that Lausse will finally return. One says, “It’s been like 4 years but for some reason I’m really really optimistic about 2022. I feel like this is the year, 100%. Can’t explain why but it just feels right.” The post is met with responses echoing the sentiment.
The second category of posts is detective work. In these posts, fans latch onto any tidbits of information they can find about Lausse or when he may drop new music. Going back months, the Reddit page is filled with any hints they have gathered: Instagram stories with Lausse’s friends, interviews with collaborators, and suggestions of concerts where he may make an appearance. They ardently pursue not just Lausse’s music but also any information as to when more may arrive. No one knows who or where he is, so the internet is scraped for clues. (The best hint as to his whereabouts come in his feature on Nix Northwest’s 2019 song, “When It Rains,” in which he implies that he moved to Paris. Some recent Instagram posts by collaborators have suggest that he is back in England.)
Lausse has not garnered this intrigue despite his mask-wearing and identity-hiding. He has gained fans because of it. Being a fan of Lausse is not just to appreciate his music, but it is to appreciate the mystery that he has created around himself. Some artists may lose their fans’ interest after not releasing new music for a few years. This is not the case with Lausse. His absence plays on the secrecy behind his persona and has elevated his legend. My aforementioned aim to create a more complete picture of the artist has remained stagnant for years, but the enigma has continued to grow. I have no idea when Lausse will release music next, but I am eagerly awaiting the next piece of the puzzle.
A Thought
In reading Douglas Smith’s biography of Rasputin (something I was drawn to after watching Rhys Ifans thoroughly entertaining portrayal of the mysteriously influential historical figure in last year’s The King’s Man), I came across an extended excerpt that immediately struck me:
“In the gilded drawing-rooms life becomes weary much faster than in middle-class apartments and humble little chambers. For money you can get whatever life offers. And now we have reached the point at which even the most fantastic possibilities fail to satisfy. Everything’s been tried! In such cases people tend to gravitate to that which lies beyond human comprehension, be it a living saint or holy fool or epileptic. Just maybe this will offer some new experience, will open up some new opportunity, some new reality. And it is for this reason that such dark, mysterious figures as Rasputin appear.”
The journalist who wrote this in 1912 was trying to explain not only why Rasputin gained favor among the elite of St. Petersburg but also why a series of holy mystics drew great attention among those of Russian wealth in this era. While the references to ‘gilded drawing rooms’ and ‘a living saint or holy fool’ are certainly indicative of a particular setting – i.e. early 1900s Russia – the sentiment of this quote would not be out of place if written today.
A narrative arose after Trump was elected and throughout his presidency that much of the forces leading to his election were economic. This story proposed that monetary grievances resulting from globalization and American jobs being shipped overseas led to some mass frustration at the elites, leading to the backlash that was the 2016 election. While this was certainly the case for some, this explanation does not work for others. I am particularly thinking of people like Jenna Ryan, the realtor who infamously took a private plane to the January 6th riot, and the group of Memphians who flew to and from Washington that day on an 8 seat private jet. It is hard to make the case that frustrations about globalization drew these well-off, technically highly-educated people to the mythos of Trump.
This is where I find the above quote to be particularly fascinating. In its large-scale psychologization of the early 1900s Russian elite, it also offers one reason (of course there are many) as to why the wealthy, educated, and influential fall victim to the conspiracy theories that occupy the American Right of today: boredom.
To be wealthy in America today is to have endless comfort and experiences at your fingertips. A continuous stream food is accessible at the push of a few buttons. You can cross the globe in 16 hours. The greatest art, books, and films are all either easily viewable or acquirable. “Everything’s been tried!” What thrills does this world then really offer if you could so easily see and experience it all?
By definition, conspiracy theories assume that there are some larger, unseen forces controlling the significant events that play out around us. There is a continuous, often undefined ‘they’ that are secretly pulling the strings. Or, in cases where the ‘they’ is vaguely defined – for example in a cabal of individuals like George Soros, Bill Gates, and Anthony Fauci – their means of control are imprecisely defined at best. The means of control remain shadowy. Such an understanding of politics has now become the norm among right-wing media, who will approach a news development with conspiratorial premises. Stories are presented as if there is an entire world of behind-the-scenes operators controlling all that happens on the public stage.
These fables, however, are not just absorbed by the less-likely-to-be-college-educated working class but also by the more-likely-to-be-college-educated wealthy population. Many of those who make the current conspiracy wing of the Republican Party are not the high-school dropout, middle Americans who are often associated with it. According to data from the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 43% of the rioters on January 6th were from a white collar profession and 26% were business owners. Economic grievances did not drive these individuals to Washington that day. When money can provide endless physical possibilities, “people tend to gravitate to that which lies beyond human comprehension.” When all the world has to offer is so easily accessible, a turn to the unknown becomes more exciting. It is in the fluidity of the conspiracy and the chasing of absurdist trails through WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels that a fresh, soon-to-be-discovered understanding of the world can arise. “This will offer some new experience, will open up some new opportunity.”
The notion of the above excerpt about Rasputin is that when individuals are grasping for new experiences, others, despite their lack of credentials, can slide in and play a significant role by appealing to the unseen. Rasputin, known for his supposedly supernatural gifts such as healing powers, created an air of mystery around himself. The triteness of life in the “gilded drawing rooms” attracted the Russian elites, most notably the Tsar’s wife Alexandra, to Rasputin. Today, the air of mystery does not just surround one person (though there is a strong argument that Trump has built this around himself), but, for conspiracy believers, it has come to surround the entire political system. In the banality of wealth today, this air attracts many made bored by their own extreme well-being. This banality leads to a search for a “new reality” that ultimately leads “such dark, mysterious” ideas to appear.
(Someone recently pointed out to me that there is a bit of irony in the fact that a lot of privileged who embrace these conspiracy theories are themselves the unknown forces who exert outsized influence. They are the political donors who, perhaps on a relatively smaller scale, have the ability to shape political happenings with the power of their wallets. I would not doubt that it is even this subconscious knowledge of the power they have that makes the financially advantaged more susceptible to the belief that others are doing the same thing, though on a larger scale.)