Album Review: Doja Cat, 'Scarlet'

It’s easy to call Doja Cat a chameleon, but it’s not exactly an apt moniker. Doja doesn’t change herself to fit different genres or styles, she bends those styles to fit her ever-shifting idiosyncratic artistic sensibilities. On Scarlet, her new studio album, Doja — or shall we call her Scarlet? — completes a tour of countless subgenres of hip-hop to showcase how effortlessly she can execute those myriad styles. She accomplishes this while unloading the clip on fanatic extremists and coming to an understanding of how fame works for her after reaching some of the industry’s most staggering heights with Planet Her.

Led by “Attention,” Scarlet attempts to be a concept album, and while it’s not entirely successful, when Doja is firing on all cylinders, she’s delivering some of the best mainstream hip-hop of the year. Across her new record, the “Need to Know” rapper grounds herself in a horrorcore aesthetic — which mostly fizzles out by the album’s back half — to explore the state of her post-Planet Her psyche. After the hit-laden Grammy-winning Planet Her, which built upon and expanded the pop-facing commercial success of Hot Pink, Doja — an artist who got her start working the ground level on Soundcloud, Tumblr, and Instagram Live — was thrust to the apex of contemporary pop stardom. Everything she touched turned to gold — from an Elvis soundtrack single to an era-saving Post Malone duet — and legions of fans had something to say about every last thing she did. Obviously, that level of scrutiny is uncomfortable for any one person to bear, and it’s especially taxing for somebody who didn’t go out in pursuit of it. Enter: Scarlet — a vicious, no-fucks-given alter ego through which Doja expresses her unfiltered disdain for unhinged stans and the industry alike. On the one hand, the alter ego acts as a questionable shield for Doja from fans calling out her allegedly problematic new beau, and on the other hand, the alter ego is a proxy for Doja to explore a level of album curation that she hadn’t yet reached on previous records.

“Paint the Town Red” — the record’s first radio single and the first hip-hop song to top the Billboard Hot 100 this year — opens Scarlet with a bouncy, snap-accented hook built around a sample of Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By.” Sonically, the song is closer to the overarching pop-rap vibes of Planet Her and Hot Pink than the rap-focused Scarlet, but that’s intentional. It’s a transitionary song that bridges the three projects, while increasing the amount of rapping Doja is doing on a single track. Here, she clearly outlines her thesis — “Fans ain’t dumb, but extremists are” — as she preps to fully morph into Scarlet on “Demons,” the album’s second track. A punk-rap banger that recalls the booming bass of Baby Keem, “Demons” is the de facto theme song for Doja’s new alter ego. As usual, her flows are impeccable, but the verses are mostly vapid from a lyrical standpoint. This is an issue that plagues most of Scarlet. Doja is overly reliant on familiar tropes and subjects (haters, trophies, her success, etc.), and it’s not often that she finds inventive new ways to cover those topics across 17 completely solo tracks. Moreover, because her specific controversies regarding her stans (or “extremists”) happened so recently, there aren’t many concrete things for her to rap about.

The first half of Scarlet operates most obviously in the headspace of the Scarlet alter ego, so, naturally, that’s where a solid number of the highlights are. “Fuck the Girls (FTG),” a ‘90s New York-nodding Trojan horse of diss track that’s actually directed at delusional stans instead of fellow female rappers, reigns as the record’s best song. “I don't love you hoes, you worship everything you couldn't be / Smokin' that Regina, becomin' all that you shouldn't be,” she raps, immediately eviscerating those who hide behind celebrity photographs and live vicariously through the work and achievements of someone they’ve never met while still somehow having a pathetic Regina George mean girl complex. “Ouchies” follows in the same lane; Doja evokes Missy Elliott’s melodic productions with this London On Da Track-helmed beat, which soundtracks more jabs at “extremists.” Both “FTG” and “Ouchies” allow Doja to properly flex her pen as well as her innate theatricality, giving multiple layers of life to songs that truly couldn’t have been made or performed by anyone else. There’s also “Wet Vagina,” a genuinely hilarious Uzi-meets-Ludacris number that combines legitimate rap comedy with one the best, zaniest beats of the year.

“97,” a lo-fi meets jazz-rap hybrid that features a hook fit for a smoked-out late-night drive straight out of a Snoop Dogg anecdote, is something of a turning point for Scarlet. From here on out, Doja’s new alter ego takes a bit of a backseat as she settles in for a lengthy stretch of horny midtempos that deal with sex, relationships, and balancing the two things while belonging to both yourself and the public. On “97,” specifically, Doja attempts to convince us that she doesn’t actually give a shit about everything she rapped about on the album’s first few songs, but she’s really convincing herself in an effort to feel at home in her own body and mind again.

“Gun” is a slinky, sultry Smino-recalling jam that successfully pulls off an extended gun-as-penis metaphor, while beginning a thread of Erykah Badu-nodding neo-soul hip-hop&B that continues with “Can’t Wait” and “Often.” The real victor of this wave of after hours rap, however, is “Agora Hills” – a career highlight that builds on the lewd intergalactic longing of “Need to Know” and features a verse spit entirely in Valley Girl vocal fry, which, in turn, recalls the Nicki Minaj’s proclivity for animated delivery. “Agora Hills” is sexy, funny, slightly creepy, and also sad — it’s that balance of emotion that makes it such an immediate and arresting record.

With a tracklist boasting 17 songs and a runtime of just under an hour, Scarlet houses its fair share of duds. “Shutcho” presents an interesting take on pluggnb production-wise, but it’s a genuinely uninteresting song that hammers the same “fuck you” sentiments that have already been run into the ground on the record. “Love Life” finds Doja in a particularly grateful mood, but it’s such a tonal shift from the heavier emotions on the album that it fits a bit awkwardly. Luckily, Doja is able to pull Scarlet out of that rut with its final four tracks. “Balut” builds on the cerebral lo-fi of “Attention,’ “Skull and Bones” finds Doja actually spitting and calling people out for falling into her trap of purposely using Hellish imagery to get a reaction from them, and “WYM Freestyle” ends the album squarely in the rap realm, quelling any remaining doubts (of which there should be none) about Doja’s ability to lay claim to that space.

Although Scarlet isn’t as conceptually thorough as one might have hoped, it remains a strong project that proves Doja’s singular ability to make practically any musical style bend to her whim, not the other way around.

Score: 74