For this 12 months’s replace of our ongoing Biggest Pop Star by Yr undertaking, Billboard is counting down our employees picks for the highest 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 9, we keep in mind the 12 months in Doja Cat — a constantly difficult and profitable pop star who not often makes it straightforward for her followers, however continues to construct one of the vital very important and rewarding careers in 2020s pop.
When she entered 2023 with 5 Grammy nominations – off the again of a Put up Malone collab, a late-stage Planet Her single and successful from the Elvis soundtrack – Doja Cat knew one thing the remainder of us didn’t fairly but get: We’re not eliminating her anytime quickly. After reaching prime 40’s zenith with the frothy Planet Her two years prior (the album peaked at No. 2 and spawned 5 consecutive prime 20 hits), Doja Cat spent 2023 setting fireplace to that pop-forward model of herself – and she or he nonetheless proved to be one of many 12 months’s most dominant pop stars within the course of.
Earlier than Doja attended the Grammys in a black latex robe that signaled a stark tonal and aesthetic shift from the pink and purple hues of Planet Her, she took on Paris Style Week whereas decked out in head-to-toe purple physique paint and 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals – an immediately viral second that reaffirmed Doja’s singular wielding of trend in her larger artist undertaking and additional proved the irrefutability of her star energy. The punk and horror influences in her new wardrobe would quickly reverberate by way of the remainder of her 2023 – however, then once more, these seeds had been actually thrown when she shaved her head final summer time: an aesthetic determination that grew to become a key image of the Scarlet period.
Billboard’s Biggest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Yr: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Yr: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake
Doja’s first piece of recent music got here by the use of an April “Kill Invoice” remix, the year-defining hit single from Grammy-winning “Kiss Me Extra” duet companion SZA. Her Eminem-nodding visitor verse used the tune’s boom-bap-infused beat as a catalyst for Doja’s intentional repositioning as a rapper within the “conventional sense.” Her remix helped push “Kill Invoice” to the highest of the Billboard Sizzling 100 – though chart credit score evaded her on this case – and primed followers for her new period.
Jacob Webster
Jacob Webster
She kicked off the next month on the MET Gala with a purr-fect ensemble impressed by the late Karl Lagerfeld’s pet cat, however that second rapidly gave option to Doja’s first main controversy of the 12 months.
“[Planet Her] and [Hot Pink] had been cash-grabs and yall fell for it,” she wrote on Twitter (now X) on Might 9. “Now [I] can go disappear someplace and contact grass with my family members on an island whereas yall weep for mediocre pop.” Mockingly, the hits from these albums helped Doja win the songwriter of the 12 months award she accepted from the BMI Pop Awards that very same day. After garnering legions of followers due to her pristine pop-rap bops, Doja appeared hellbent on obliterating that; giant parts of her fan base had been extremely vocal of their objections to Doja’s remarks, however the tirade didn’t derail her 12 months.
“Consideration,” the primary style of Scarlet, arrived on Jun. 16, incomes a heat reception from critics, who lauded Doja’s deal with deft lyricism and her additional exploration of these boom-bap influences. Followers greeted the tune with a extra middling reception; “Consideration” spent simply three weeks on the Sizzling 100 and peaked at No. 31. Doja went a bit quiet after “Consideration,” however she got here again with an much more contentious tirade the next month. “My followers don’t get to call themselves s–t,” she wrote on Threads. “For those who name your self a ‘Kitten’ or f–king ‘Kittenz’ which means you could get off your telephone and get a job and assist your dad and mom with the home.” As soon as once more deliberately antagonizing her fanbase, Doja discovered herself embroiled in an argument that examined customers’ persistence along with her, in the end culminating in almost 240,000 misplaced Instagram followers in beneath every week.
Nonetheless, as she proved along with her notorious career-threatening chat room controversy again in 2020, Doja Cat has 9 lives – and perhaps a number of further. The Grammy-winner rapidly turned her fortunes round with “Paint the City Pink,” a bouncy Dionne Warwick-sampling monitor that grew to become each her highest-debuting solo tune and the primary hip-hop tune to prime the Sizzling 100 in 2023. The tune grew right into a juggernaut on radio – it’s spent seven weeks atop each Pop and Rhythmic Airplay – and have become ubiquitous on TikTok with out the assistance of an over-arching dance problem or pattern, additional cementing her as star that strikes the tradition, not one which occurs to be buoyed by one in all its myriad waves. “Paint” topped the Sizzling 100 the identical week Doja stole the MTV Video Music Awards with a three-song medley — “Paint,” “Consideration,” and horrorcore-leaning promo single “Demons” — that reminded audiences of her efficiency prowess and gifted customers the primary take a look at Doja’s imaginative and prescient for Scarlet in a reside setting. On the ceremony, “Consideration” picked up a Moonperson – Doja’s fifth – for greatest artwork path.
Though Doja had totally fleshed out her Scarlet alter ego by the VMAs, she was nonetheless attempting on totally different titles for the document. (Bear in mind Hellmouth? First of All?) Furthermore, the singles had been a far cry from the “no extra pop” and “French conceptual experimental nation/bohemian fusion with the essence of bluegrass” descriptors she (generally jokingly) gave to followers. Nonetheless, Scarlet arrived in all of its jazz rap-meets-lo-fi-meets horrorcore glory on Sept. 20. Evaluations had been favorable, however unimpressive first week numbers (No. 4, 72,000 items earned) signaled that Doja couldn’t fairly translate the success of “Paint the City Pink” to its guardian LP. Followers had been nonetheless exhibiting up for her, however they didn’t fairly love what she was shelling out, a few of which included sporting an ill-received t-shirt that includes alt-right comic Sam Hyde.
As she did with Planet Her, Doja appears to be taking part in the lengthy sport with Scarlet. Her Ice Spice and Doechii-assisted headlining area tour has been trekking throughout the U.S., and “Agora Hills,” an instantaneous Scarlet standout – is already rising into the album’s second main hit, at the moment sitting at No. 24 on the Sizzling 100. With Scarlet, which ended 2023 as one of many Billboard employees’s 10 favourite albums of the 12 months, Doja challenged each her followers and pop music at giant greater than any of her contemporaries. That fearlessness didn’t all the time repay, however it did all the time hold her on the forefront of the dialog – additional cementing her as arguably essentially the most constant pop star of the 2020s, and one in all solely 4 artists to seem on all three Biggest Pop Star prime 10 rankings Billboard has executed this decade.
