This cover, released by Kemosabe/RCA, features Doja Cat’s “Scarlet.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Before Doja Cat, the adventurous and often absurd rap phenomenon born of internet celebrity, released her stellar, take-no-prisoners fourth full-length Scarlet, she bit the hand that feeds.
It seems, as it were, something like.
On social media, she advised her followers, who call themselves “kittens,” to “get a job.” Some of her fan pages demanded an apology and then suspended their accounts when they were not received. No stranger to breaking convention, Doja Cat has inspired conversations about celebrities and the fans who make them that way. Does she owe them anything? Were they mistaken in thinking she did it?
“Attention” was the first single she released, a scathing treatise on parasocial relationships, particularly between her fans and herself. The sound enhances the sound: a 90s hip-hop beat, the first lines of the first verse: “Look at me / Look at me” and the pause before “Are you looking?”
Fame has its demons and is usually the source material for very boring pop music. Here, Doja Cat turns the trope on its head: First, she abandoned the glossy pop of her last two albums, 2021’s “Planet Her” and 2019’s “Hot Pink,” and instead stepped up her flow. It’s harsh throughout, but her humor is never lost. “On “Ouchies,” she raps, “Hundred Billies / I’m an asshole / No Eilish.”
Fans as villains could very well be a theme here because they appear throughout Scarlet. “F—-The Girls” is Attention’s more merciless sister song, a searing, cathartic release that’s the song equivalent of a therapist instructing his patient to write a letter with all the fiery things he’d like to say. the one who offended them. (And, in this case, destroy it.) Except, of course, that instead of getting rid of the note—or having someone accidentally send a related letter, as happens in many sitcoms—she sends it. everyone, scorched earth style.
Gone are the days of “Say So”—and even further, the comedic virality of tracks that made her say “Mooo!” Instead, there’s the shimmering “Shutcho” and its sample of the soft-rock hit “I’m Not In Love” by English band 10cc; the new jack swing sweetness of “Agora Hills,” infused with Troop’s 1989 hit “All I Do Is Think of You” and the R&B romance “Can’t Wait.”
In mid-September, her album’s opening track, “Paint the Town Red,” which includes a sample of Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By,” became the first rap song to hit number one in more than a year. It was the longest absence since 2001. (For those curious, there was an 18-month gap between Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” and Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.”) Country music has been king for the past few months. first place – if anyone could topple his dominance, it would be Doja and her rule-breaking spirit.
On this album, she goes beyond her Scarlet Letter and wears the color as a point of pride.