Music

Pluggnb rears its head for a bit on “Shutcho” — but, thankfully, it makes much more of an impressive showing elsewhere on the album. “Shutcho” is a cute, inoffensive F.U. anthem, but it lacks any bite or edge to truly be an interesting song. There’s entirely too much fiery pent-up energy on this album for a song this straightforward to feel like such a non-event — then again, that flat chorus isn’t doing the song any favors. At least the next song (“Agora Hills”) more than makes up for how middling this one is.

On top of already being a subdued track, “Can’t Wait” unfortunately lands during a section of the album where the tempo slows and the momentum stalls, which only highlights how nondescript it is. Doja has too many incredible songs about being horny for this one to feel so flaccid. The drums are the true highlight of the production; they thankfully inject a slightly funky rhythm into a production that relies more on its empty space than anything else.

Somewhat of a thematic and tonal turning point for the album, “Love Life” finds Doja really leaning into the jazz influences that are woven throughout a large chunk of the album. Firmly in her gratitude era, Doja celebrates the things that she loves about her life as she drenches her voice with love-drunk euphoria.

“Go Off” is just fine. It’s catchy enough to leave something of an impression, but it’s not necessarily a particularly memorable song. The laidback production forces the song to source the majority of its urgency from Doja’s vocal performance — but even she can’t really sell the empowerment-anthem jumble littered across the verses.

This sultry lo-fi track helps end the record worlds away from the catchy pop sensibilities of “Paint the Town Red.” Doja boasts about her skill — and while she always had a claim to do so, it feels especially potent now, after 15 tracks of some real spitting. You can take a whole track to lay out how you’re above competing with your peers when you’ve spent a whole album displaying why. There’s a sense of security and quiet confidence in “Balut” that feels like the reward for the emotional journey and developmental arc of both Doja and Scarlet.

Between the sample of Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By” and the finger snap-laden beat, it’s no wonder “Paint the Town Red” found its way atop singles charts around the world. While it was a bit underwhelming as a standalone single, the bouncy track works much better in the context of the full album. As Scarlet’s opener, “Paint the Town Red” functions as a smart bridge between the more pop-oriented sound of Planet Her with the darker feel of Scarlet.

Lyrically, Doja immediately establishes the “no f—ks given” attitude of her Scarlet alter ego (“B—h, I said what I said,” she opens the song); structurally, she changes her sung verse-sung chorus-rapped second verse template to place the focus on rapping first and singing second. Already a solid track on its own, the song’s placement in Scarlet‘s sequencing helps it shine a little brighter.

On this Baby Keem-evoking standout, Doja flirts with punk-rap and horrorcore in a way that recalls her performance of an unreleased song — dubbed “Shots” — at her 2022 Coachella set. The raucous track finds Doja in a familiar bag of addressing haters, but here, she’s specifically taking aim at claims that she’s sold her soul to achieve her current level of success. If “Paint the Town Red” is the introduction to the world of Scarlet, “Demons” is the pounding anthem for Scarlet — the vicious, sly alter ego that guides the front half of the record.

While it’s not a lyrical standout by any means, D.A. Got That Dope’s brooding production paired with Doja’s frenetic vocal delivery makes for an engaging song that actively pushes the boundaries of her sonic profile.

Although the back half of the album never truly lets go of the singing, Scarlet ends squarely in rap territory with “WYM Freestyle” — a single stream-of-consciousness verse that takes aim at everyone and everything. The blaring bass recalls the horrorcore hints on “Demons,” but this time, Doja trades the theatricality for an incisive hard-hitting jab. Not only does the structure lend itself well to traditional definitions of rap, but Doja’s beat selection — across the whole album, really — consciously shifts her away from top 40 at several turns on Scarlet. “I was wakin’ all these hoes up in my sleep/ I was cakin’ while these hoes could barely eat,” she snarls. There’s simply no way to still not seriously and genuinely consider Doja Cat a rapper after this track, in particular.

As one of the album’s earliest flirtations with jazz rap and lo-fi, “97” makes the smart move to pair those sounds with a gloriously unbothered Snoop Dogg-evoking hook that recalls the breeziness of West Coast rap. Doja works very well in this lane, but it is funny to hear her repeat “looks like we didn’t give a s–t” when every song before this one points towards her, well, giving a s–t.

On this East Coast-nodding track — the production definitely favors Fat Joe — Doja takes on a more offensive approach to handle her detractors, recalling the announcement cadence of street fighter video games. Here, Doja packs in some double entendres and addresses the music industry with the same fire that she addresses delusional stans. “Okay, I don’t mean to instigate/ Y’all really phone it in with the music lately/ I don’t need another hit ’cause it’s useless, really,” she raps.

A cousin to Planet Her tracks “Been Like This” and “Love to Dream,” “Often” finds Doja delving even deeper into the neo-soul stylings she’s hinted at across her discography. She’s really showing off how effortlessly she can simultaneously operate as a primary rapper and hook singer without the quality of either position ever dipping. The best parts, however, are when Doja amps up that Badu-esque vocal fry as she delivers the song’s horniest sequences. “Way you bump and grindin’ on me/ You got more than somethin’ I need,” she croons.

As the first taste of Scarlet, “Attention” perfectly executed its job. Not only did the production’s reliance on boom-bap hallmarks signal a sonic shift from Doja’s previous singles, “Attention” also found Doja actually rapping verses with substance. In the past, Doja had definitely flexed her rap skills, albeit on verses that didn’t really say much. Here, she addresses her controversies while also carrying herself with a certain swagger that simply doesn’t exist in the pop world. In the context of Scarlet, “Attention” is the core of the Scarlet alter ego — because literal attention is the backbone of the dark fanatic-artist dynamic that Doja spends so much of the album exploring.

Straight out of the lineage of “Need to Know”, “Gun” is a slinky, sultry ode to sex. Here, Doja employs an extended metaphor to boast about her apparently inimitable skills when it comes to handling a man down south. “Here’s a new position from the front/ Ain’t gon’ be no duckin’ when ya bust,” she coos in the chorus. The pluggnb-indebted production helps keep things light, between Doja’s breathless flows and the innate heft of a gun-as-penis metaphor.

On this track — another one that’s steeped in lo-fi — Doja lays bare the purpose of all the hellish imagery in a way that feels redundant, but she delivers the line so wryly that, by some miracle, it works. “The only thing I sold was a record/ The only thing I folded under was pressure/ Can I say I digress, you the aggressor,” she raps over a jazzy instrumental. This is the kind of soul-baring moment that Doja has been working towards for years. From addressing devil-worshipping allegations to remaining steadfast in her knowledge of her craft and skill, Doja leaves no stone unturned on this pensive, introspective track.

This title has been floating around for months now, and now that it’s finally here, it’s clear why so many ears are enraptured by this particular song. On “Agora Hills,” Doja morphs into a master shapeshifter, transforming into several different characters, voices, and accents as she expresses the complex feelings of wanting to publicize a love you must keep private out of necessity — whatever that necessity may be. Doja’s Nicki Minaj influences are on full display when she raps an entire verse in a spot-on Kardashian-leaning valley girl accent, giving a meta edge to her commentary on living life for the public.

Scarlet has its fair share of stark transitions, but the abrasiveness of the shift from the album’s first two songs — “Paint the Town Red” and “Demons” — to “Wet Vagina” totally works to its advantage. A frantic, Uzi-recalling trap banger, “Wet Vagina” finds Doja at her most braggadocious on Scarlet; she flaunts her WAP, her success, and her man across two unsuspectingly blunt verses. Her tongue-in-cheek delivery also recalls the humor of prime Ludacris in the way that it adds a more nuanced sense of performance to her rapping. “Wet Vagina” is similar to “Need to Know” in that it’s the quintessential through-line song on a Doja album — a song that connects her from her Soudncloud days and meme queen heyday to her contemporary pop stardom and nascent rap era.

Over a beat that combines the booming 808s of ’90s hip-hop with the slinkiness of 2010s trap, Doja fully unloads the clip and chants “f—k the girl.” The biting track excels because of the theatricality of Doja’s delivery; while her lyrics are still a bit weak, Doja’s performance transcends all. She fully commits to the rowdy, rambunctious on-sight energy that comes with the utterance of a phrase like “f—k the girls.” Perhaps what makes this song most impressive is that it’s able to exist outside the realm of “female rap beef” because Doja herself has operated as adjacent to that realm at best. Thus, there’s no misconstruing to whom Scarlet directs her wrath — “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,” she spits.