LOS ANGELES (AP) — Earlier than Doja Cat, the adventurous and infrequently absurdist rap phenomenon born from web movie star, launched her stellar fourth full-length album, the take-no-prisoners “Scarlet,” she bit the hand that feeds.
Type of.
On social media, she informed her followers, who name themselves “kittenz” to “get a job.” A couple of of her fan pages demanded an apology after which deactivated their accounts when it wasn’t acquired. No stranger to bucking conference, Doja Cat had impressed dialog about movie star and the followers that make them that approach. Did she owe them something? Have been they improper to imagine she did?
“Consideration” was the primary single she dropped — a biting treatise on parasocial relationships, significantly, the one between her followers and herself. The sonics amplify the supply: a ‘90s hip-hop beat, the opening strains of the primary verse: “Have a look at me / Have a look at me,” and a break earlier than “You lookin’?”
Fame has its demons, and it’s usually the source material for very unimaginative pop music. Here, Doja Cat flips the trope on its head — for one, she’s abandoned the glossy pop of her last two albums, 2021’s “Planet Her” and 2019’s “Hot Pink”, and instead sharpened her flow. Throughout, it cuts — but her humor is never lost. “On “Ouchies,” she raps, “A hunnid Billies / I’m the goat / No Eilish.”
Fans as villains may very well be a theme here, because it appears throughout “Scarlet.” “F—- The Girls” is “Attention’s” more unforgiving sister song, a burning cathartic release — it is the song equivalent of a therapist instructing their patient to write a letter with all the incendiary things they’d like to say to someone who has wronged them. (And, in the case of this example, destroy it.) Except, of course, instead of getting rid of the note — or having someone accidentally send the letter to its subject, as is the plot to so many sitcoms — she sends it to everyone, scorched earth-style.
Gone are the days of “Say So” – and even further away, the comedic virality of the tracks that made her, like “Mooo!” Instead there’s the shimmery “Shutcho” and its sample of the soft rock hit “I’m Not In Love” by the English group 10cc; the new jack swing sweetness of “Agora Hills”, filtered through Troop’s 1989 hit “All I Do Is Think of You,” and the R&B romance of “Can’t Wait.”
In mid-September, her album opener “Paint the Town Red” — which features a sample of Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By” — became the first rap song to hit No. 1 in over a year. That was the longest absence since 2001. (For the history-curious: there was an 18-month gap between Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” and Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.) For the previous couple of months, nation music has occupied the highest spots — if anybody had the facility to dethrone its dominance, it’s Doja and her rule breaking spirit.
On this album, she goes past her “Scarlet Letter” – and wears the colour as some extent of delight.