The basic aspect of turning into a profitable web troll is with the ability to preserve the very best doable threshold for what it takes to faucet out. It’s a sport of getting the opposite particular person to hit the block button first. However that might by no means be Doja Cat, as a result of frankly she may do the forwards and backwards all day — and he or she has. After months of feuding together with her personal followers on-line, two opposing sides brawling within the trenches of the IDGAF battle, the rapper is burning no matter white flag she may wave. On her fourth studio album Scarlet, Doja Cat pushes her tolerance to the restrict. However that isn’t to say that she’s successful.
Whereas the musician exhibits no indicators of give up on the 17-track report, there are cracks in her armor. “Smokin’ whereas I cruise by the valley/Appears to be like like we don’t give a shit,” she particulars on “97,” a Jay Versace-produced minimize about pissing folks off and capitalizing on the engagement. Via the fading piano melody on the track’s outro, Doja Cat reminds you 4 extra instances how a lot she doesn’t care: “Appears to be like like we don’t/That’s ’trigger we don’t/Motherfucker, that’s ’trigger we don’t/Lil’ bitch, that’s ’trigger we don’t.” It’s a chorus she repeats throughout the album.
70 % of the almost hour-long Scarlet tries to persuade you that Doja is unbothered, whilst she fired off hyper-specific breakdowns of precisely what it’s she isn’t bothered about. “Fuck the Women (FTG)” takes intention on the paparazzi and seemingly references her on-line sparring with followers who requested her to declare her love for them. “I don’t love you hoes,” Doja Cat reiterates, in case it wasn’t clear earlier than. “You worship all the things you couldn’t be.” On “Shutcho,” in her signature melodic cadence, she hammers it in: “You don’t exist to me, miss, I’m not your good friend.” The rapper’s try at dismantling idol worship basically functioned as her album rollout course of. Her technique of pushing her stans to the breaking level of what they’re keen to assist speaks to how effectively she performs the sport.
On-line, she berated her followers for falling for the “money grabs” on her older music, together with the anomalous pop-rap on Scorching Pink (2019) and extraterrestrial assortment on Planet Her (2021). Even when her fan accounts began to close down, she celebrated being free of their expectations, saying: “Seeing all these folks unfollow makes me really feel like I’ve defeated a big beast that’s been holding me down for thus lengthy.” Her relentless verbal assaults all through Scarlet, usually immediately addressing the listener as “you,” serve to fully sever any remaining parasocial ties.
All three Scarlet singles (“Consideration,” “Demons,” and the chart-topping “Paint the City Pink”) echo the identical sentiment: She stated what she stated, she by no means gave a fuck, and he or she’s the fastest-growing bitch on all of your apps now. However this bravado isn’t all the time profitable, particularly when she defends her relationship with comic and streamer J. Cyrus, who has been accused of manipulating and emotionally abusing members of his Twitch workforce and neighborhood. “Hope you’ll be able to handlе the warmth, put your title within the streets/Get used to my followers lookin’ at you/Fuck what they heard, I don’t fuck with them birds,” she raps on “Agora Hills,” an archetypal Doja Cat love track that suffers by echoing her rivalry that her followers are “depressing hoes” for mentioning the allegations on social media.
“We been making very many individuals upset,” Doja Cat boasts on “Moist Vagina.” The track is paying homage to her early-career rap releases on SoundCloud, birthed from bursts of inventive power unhindered by exterior stress. That’s one other factor she’s bothered about — the concept that her talent as a rapper was being crushed below the burden of her success as a pop artist. Although the album usually feels disjointed, Doja Cat tries to return to that area right here. She forgoes pop in favor of songs like “Cranium and Bones,” which bites again at whispers that she bought her soul, and “Ouchies,” which dips right into a Lil Wayne-esque movement much more pointedly than her homage to Nicki Minaj on Planet Her’s “Get Into It (Yuh).” (It’s additionally value noting that Scarlet marks her first album since 2018’s Amala to be devoid of any contributions from the controversial producer Dr. Luke, who rode again into pop music’s good graces on the power of her music.)
Doja Cat, not less than on some stage, can’t shake what folks should say about her. Throughout the report, she revisits criticism with detailed precision, having had time to mull over reactions to her shaved head, or her physique, or her trend decisions, or her reluctance to fall in line. So long as she doesn’t have to surrender any of that autonomy, she doesn’t care if she has to maintain reloading ammo within the trenches. From day one, Doja Cat has been burning the pages of the rulebook on pop stardom. Of their place, she’s filed case research on the fragility of virality — crucially, tips on how to navigate the sticky trappings that bind artists to the actual sound or persona that defines them from an early second — and Scarlet is simply one other chapter.
Scarlet closes with “WYM Freestyle,” a bewitching rap report that sounds prefer it ought to be blaring out over Gotham Metropolis. Right here, she pulls again the curtain on her lengthy con: “At all times knew I used to be gon’ change from the start.” Even when she’s preternaturally preoccupied with what’s taking place in her mentions, she has plans in place for constructing her empire, just like the lavish life she particulars on “Balut.” And her self-awareness breaks by the floor on “Love Life,” the place she raps: “I like it when my followers love change, that’s how we alter the sport.” It’s the closest she involves calling a truce with them. But, such moments are brief lived. On Scarlet, pop’s final edgelord is seeing purple and he or she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get the final phrase.