as the best
this album appears
of 2023
in the opinion of
Harpsichord zine
Scarlet
Doja Cat
2023
You can call Doja a pop star all you want– but the rules of hip hop have changed well into the 2020s, therefore, this LP proves without a doubt that she’s the top crossover rapper in the game right now.
Horrorcore/Neo Soul/Pop Rap
BY DA’SHAN “NIGHTSHAWN101” SMITH
FEBRUARY 1, 2024
Sometimes listening to Scarlet can feel like a bittersweet music experience. When looking at Doja Cat’s career, she’s always been a rapper. A majority of her songs feature her rapping. They just also happen to have her singing in pop melodies with the flair of a slight R&B attitude. Although it’s sometimes not the best source, her Wikipedia page for the previous album, Planet Her , cites that the Grammy-nominated blockbuster “is an amalgamation of pop, hip hop, and R&B styles.” For the majority of her career (and honestly, until it fizzles out), Doja Cat will always be a 33-33-33 percent artist for those three genres. No matter how she tries to shapeshift, or curse her fans out on Instagram and Twitter.
The roll out for Scarlet featured one main identifier. As the mass success of Planet Her came to a close in 2022, Doja Cat had to move forward in the next stage of her career. This included a lengthy, but otherwise tactic-driven, media roll out. During that summer, she shaved her head and eyebrows– achieving the goal of altering her look. That caused such a stir, that even highbrow outlets such as CNN reported on the drastic change. The Planet Her era officially closed out in January 2023, with a “Y2K remix” of the deep cut, “I Don’t Do Drugs” – which floated away as an intergalactic adios. When talking to ‘Variety’ about her next era– which would eventually be Scarlet –Doja teased “Finally, I get to rap again. A lot of people dis-credit me.”
Then she did what most rappers who are faced with “you’re a pop star only” criticism do. She rebelled by saying something that would further aggravate the conversation. To say the least, she inherently reacted like a pop star. She alienated her fan base– playing them as pawns, by tweeting, “no more pop,” that April. She made it seem like the criticisms that her bars are mediocre had gotten to her head. And by May, she tweeted to much of an uproar, ‘Planet Her and [her 2019 sophomore album] Hot Pink were cash grabs and yall fell for it.” After upsetting fans throughout the summer by doubling down on that notion while simultaneously releasing three singles (“Attention,” “Paint The Town Red,” and “Demons”), Planet Her finally arrived on September 22.
On the thirteenth track of Scarlet , Doja Cat croons “The only thing I sold was a record!” at the top of the first verse of “Skull and Bones.” In terms of music that appeals to hip hop heads who yearn for traditional golden age ideology, “Skull and Bones” is the most on-the-nose. It creeps with a menacing saxophone that aligns with the foundations of jazz in hip hop. It features Doja– who is usually whimsical and slightly kidd-ish with her delivery– rapping from her actual speaking voice. It’s almost as if her rap is talking– making a speech. A declaration.
Prior to the release of Scarlet , Doja Cat had been accused of being a satanist, or a devil worshiper. It’s not like musicians have never been indicted in this specific media witch hunt before. Let the music conspiracy theorists tell it: Aligning with the devil during a pivotal career shift is almost like a right of passage for A-list superstars. But somehow with Doja Cat, her fans and the naysayers who despise how easy it is for her to craft a bubblegum hit, were in fact lost during the transition.
Long gone were the days of bubblegum pink, wet and wavy wigs that channeled her rap idol Nicki Minaj. Long gone were the girlie, cupcake melodies of post-disco, as laid out on “Say So” from Hot Pink or 2020’s Ariana Grande collab, “Motive.” On the first single, “Attention,” Doja Cat alerts her fans that yeah, all her previous eras popped because “My taste good,” but in this era, “I just had to redirect my cookin.” On the tread-genre-abiding, “Wet Vagina,” she suggests “pass the pop-corn, cause I really like rap beef.”
Much of Scarlet is informed by the regular semantics of any rap album where a star feels they need to prove themself in the midst of conversation. It has the songs that rappers need to fall back on as commercial hits, just in case their experiment to convince the crowd goes awry. Everything about Scarlet is intentional– even when the trolling tends to distract from that. “Paint The Town Red '' is in fact pop (…. rap), subtly casting Doja Cat as a liar. It’s addictive sample of Dionne Warwick’s 1964 staple, “Walk On By,” the Oakland-based hyphy snaps of the instrumental, and the “mmmm she’s a devil” chorus instantly catapulted the single to No. 1 in multiple countries around the globe, including the US Hot 100 and the Pop radio charts. It became the first rap song in over a year to peak in the top spot of the Hot 100, and the genre’s most streamed on Spotify in 2023.
Strategically placing that song as the first on the album, is not only a tone setter for how we encounter the devilish antics of her bloody-bodied alter-ego, Scarlet , but also comes as a “here damn moment,” for her fans. “Paint The Town Red” is genius, because it works as a bridge. It’s aware of the job Doja Cat still has– to be frank, she still is a recording artist that survives in the top spot by providing pop hits. It almost works as an apology for her acting out– she’s here to provide the people what she does best, before switching out the lane that she feels comfortable in.
The first three songs of Scarlet work in that space. “Demons” – which features a short music horror flick of Christina Ricci being haunted by a demonic Doja Cat– recalls the heydays of horrorcore, which has always been an integral part of hip hop culture. As Doja Cat is being accused of being a satanist, she plays into that part– causing controversy as a means to alienate pop fans and a way to align herself more with rap. This ultimately works for the intentional artistic tension that happens throughout the album. You have to take what Doja is saying with a grain of salt. Is she trolling or is she being honest? The follow up, “Wet Vagina,” plays on how male artists gloat about their “big d*ck energy,” but stays in line with Doja’s efforts of providing a feminist-abiding catalog.
“Paint The Town Red,” “Demons,” and “Wet Vagina” function as what’s popular in today’s new gen of rap. Hyphy where Tyga freestyled over the beat. Horrorcore that recalls Three Six Mafia’s spirit passed onto the likes of 21 Savage and GloRilla. Tread that’s predicting the wave of Yeat, who found his mainstream breakout moment alongside Drake later in 2023. A few tracks down, and “Ouchies” (produced by London On Da Track) finds her accessing 2000s dance battle hip hop– a subtle nod to her days of being a pop-n-locker. Through rap, and the beauty of hip hop, Doja Cat not only is well aware of the assignment she’s tasked herself with– she’s flexing her skills over varying genres. No two songs on ‘Scarlet’ sound alike.
Read more Doja Cat
Related Tangents
During Doja Cat’s long roll out for Scarlet , other intriguing moments happened that many didn’t capture as shifters for the next stage of her career. Rap culture– and hip hop in general– is about co-signs and alignments. Much of Scarlet ’s serious rap moments happen over boom bap and neo soul. In October 2022, Doja Cat was seen (sporting her bald head look) at Paris Fashion Week in the front row alongside the matriarch of neo soul, Erykah Badu, and ‘The Velvet Rope’ purveyor, Janet Jackson.
A year prior to that, she went on Instagram live in the midst of the Planet Her era to shout out Little Brother’s “Whatever You Say.” That moment shocked real hip hop heads, who had lost a sense of respect for Doja. Even Phonte– who is heavily regarded in the spaces of underground hip hop and R&B for his work in Little Brother and The Foreign Exchange– joked “IN THE RACIAL CHAT ROOMS BUMPIN, @LittleBrotherNC!!! Much love, @DojaCat. Thank you for listening."
There are two sides to the upcoming argument. Yes, it’s unfair to automatically perceive someone as a rapper if they deliver bars over those types of instrumentals. When Doja Cat released her first single, “Attention,” which features her over that type of music, as well as giving a more conscious approach of delivery– she’s been called “Doja Lamar” as a criticism. Azealia Banks even labeled that effort as “try hard.” However, what is an artist supposed to do if pop rap still continues to get snubbed?
It’s not as if Doja Cat is pandering to the sounds of neo soul and boom bap on Scarlet – that’s always been her original lane. She’s not only shown that she’s a student of the genres, but also found success with them– from 2019’s “Rules” which gained her Kendrick Lamar comparisons, to “Casual” and “Candy” finding her singing with a hyperpop-meets-hip hop-soul sensibility on her debut album, Amala . Ask any real Doja Cat fan, and they’re going to confess that although the success of Planet Her is fun for the sake of bragging wars on Stan Twitter™, it’s really Amala and Hot Pink that are the preferred efforts because of how soulful they are as records.
“Often” and “Can’t Wait” are the most R&B portions of the LP – aligning with the origins of that era, and her love for Badu and Phonte. “Often” sounds like a play from the book of Solange’s 2019 album, When I Get Home . “Can’t Wait” even grounds itself in a sample of "Impeach the President" by The Honey Dippers– which is such an important hi-hat and bass instrumental for the foundations of how hip hop first came to be. What makes Scarlet so brilliant is that those same pop fans and naysayers are in fact getting instructed in an era where the biggest stars are chasing clout rather than returning back to the basics.
“Fuck The Girls” and “97” are both more boom-bap centric moments, where Doja is actually rapping rapping. The opinions on whether her bars land are subjective (and editorially speaking there are profound moments). From “FTG” firing shots at the behaviors of stan culture when they criticize women in rap, where she unloads a clip with “Now what the heck, darn, frick? Y'all want attention/Since when was y'all my bastard children? Go 'head and raise y'all self/Come get ya badass kids, no need to mention.”
To her slyly referencing slyly referencing Pop Culture on “97” with “Yeah, said these are clothes, motherfucker, what are those,” a nod to North West’s viral rap moment at her father’s 2020 Paris Fashion Week show (which ties into her other references to being an emerging fashion icon, see: “Wet Vagina” about the “running fashion” and the MET Gala). Or better yet: “You look like a butter face, butter body, butter toes/I put Can't Believe It on my early morning butter toast.” A line that not alludes to the commercials of a signature margarine, but also a punchline delivery that makes fun of the immaturity present in Ed from the animated classic comedy, ‘Ed, Edd, & Eddy’.
Doja is not only giving us an album where she’s linking the parasocial connection to her fans and critics, she’s also antagonizing it by trolling. The alter ego of Scarlet is witty and cunning– she’s slick at the mouth and most who listened too, caught it. “Shutcho” is a highlight in the tracklist because the background vocals of the chorus mocks her rap nemesis, BIA, by imitating the latter’s signature hook phrase. “Shutcho goofy ass up,” she warns on what’s perceived to be a diss track.
Then there is the speculated Nicki Minaj jabs. From imitating the “why she think she Nicki M” call out that she’s faced Nicki’s loyal Barbz do on “Attention” to “you need to mind ya business Helga Pataki/I might do something devilish if you at me,” warning shots on “Skull and Bones.” That “Skull and Bones” moment will prompt a pause towards the end of the listening session. Did Doja and Cardi already speak to each other about their disappointment in someone they perceived to be an idol? After all, Cardi did subtweet that Nicki acts like the ‘Hey Arnold’ antagonist who obsesses over the very one she bullies. Are we experiencing an Idols-turned-Rivals moment being channeled through the alter ego of Scarlet ?
(And for the editorial record: Doja Cat has denied having beef with Cardi, Nicki, and even Meg.)
Although “Paint The Town Red” is nominated for a Grammy– and the Troop-sampling slow jam, “Agora Hills” is maintaining in the Top 10 of multiple global charts, including the Hot 100 at the time of this publication– Scarlet is considered by many to be a commercial flop. It failed to debut at No. 1, and only sold 72,000 album-equivalent units in its opening week, of which 6,000 were pure album sales. This is low in comparison to the massive success of Planet Her , with many blaming Doja’s alienating behavior and outbursts as a source for the lack of support.
Or maybe, it’s just a stipulation of the fourth era course that many female pop stars face (which is a different editorial discourse for a different day)...
However, what makes this album strong? It’s a textbook rap and hip hop record in today’s age, where that’s rarely celebrated– even when critics posture themselves as knowing the inner intricacies of the genre and its respective culture. Scarlet is well aware of the criticisms and praise it will receive; on “Balut” she acknowledges “it’s like taking candy from a baby.” Doja Cat has acknowledged in a 2021 interview with Missy Elliott that writing straightforward raps that are nuanced with bars and logical content is a weak point for her. And even though she seems to go through a trial and error on this LP, what makes it one of the top hip hop releases in not only just 2023, but in the past ten years, is because hip hop sells when the character is aware of the world, space, and role they occupy. On Scarlet, Doja Cat at least challenged herself to surpass what people thought they knew about her as a recording artist.
And for that “Lil mama, go awff!”
appears as one of the
“Go Off” for not only being a cute celebration of Doja Cat’s status, but for also being the underrated gem that doesn't completely abandon the ‘Planet Her’ sound that made her popular.
“Fuck The Girls” for its hard knocking beat and menacing rap quality.
“Agora Hills” for being such an addicting ode to R&B; her ability to switch flows and have them interact with each other; the sample of a classic quiet storm song; and reminding listeners of the formula that made “Streets” from Hot Pink a breakout moment when R&B is still finding its way back to the mainstream forefront.
“Love Life” for being the love letter to fans, and showing her at her most gratuitous. Everything is not that dire in the grand scheme of it all.
“Skull and Bones” for being Doja cat at her lyrical best when it comes to storytelling, and honoring the confessional theme of Scarlet.
Key Tracks
In Other News:
“Agora Hills” Appears in the countdown for
It’s hard to listen to Scarlet in full– through its diversity in so many components of hip hop– and not feel like the main criticisms come from a place of jealousy. Oh well! Doja Cat knows how to craft a body of work. Simply get over that and deal with it… We’ve been witnessing this moment for years. When it comes to music, there can be such a thing as a “perfect pop star,” even when they personally or artistically stumble. Maybe the next go-round Doja might make a rock album. But right now, she’s nearly perfected her era of giving rap and hip hop.
First of all, Doja Cat is delivering an entire concept as a solo recording artist– without “a feature or a new sidekick.” Layered in varying production that explores multiple subgenres of hip hop’s past and present, Scarlet is what more individuals in the game should strive for. The best, classic records of the genre’s history are the ones that showcased a little bit of everything– with a character fronting the project who understands that mission. Doja Cat is not only keeping herself true to a sound she’s cultivated since the start of her SoundCloud days back in 2013/2014, she’s still able to build on the themes of her previous, successful albums. Doja Cat functions as a pop star, because of the global success she’s obtained, but she got that through rapping and embracing hip hop– whether people who hate her as a person want to admit that or not…