The fundamental element of becoming a successful internet troll is being able to maintain the highest possible threshold for what it takes to tap out. It’s a game of getting the other person to hit the block button first. But that would never be Doja Cat, because frankly she could do the back and forth all day — and she has. After months of feuding with her own fans online, two opposing sides brawling in the trenches of the IDGAF war, the rapper is burning whatever white flag she could wave. On her fourth studio album Scarlet, Doja Cat pushes her tolerance to the limit. But that isn’t to say that she’s winning.
While the musician shows no signs of surrender on the 17-track record, there are cracks in her armor. “Smokin’ while I cruise through the valley/Looks like we don’t give a shit,” she details on “97,” a Jay Versace-produced cut about pissing people off and capitalizing on the engagement. Through the fading piano melody on the song’s outro, Doja Cat reminds you four more times how much she doesn’t care: “Looks like we don’t/That’s ’cause we don’t/Motherfucker, that’s ’cause we don’t/Lil’ bitch, that’s ’cause we don’t.” It’s a refrain she repeats across the album.
70 percent of the nearly hour-long Scarlet tries to convince you that Doja is unbothered, even as she fired off hyper-specific breakdowns of exactly what it is she isn’t bothered about. “Fuck the Girls (FTG)” takes aim at the paparazzi and seemingly references her online sparring with fans who asked her to declare her love for them. “I don’t love you hoes,” Doja Cat reiterates, in case it wasn’t clear before. “You worship everything you couldn’t be.” On “Shutcho,” in her signature melodic cadence, she hammers it in: “You do not exist to me, miss, I’m not your friend.” The rapper’s attempt at dismantling idol worship essentially functioned as her album rollout process. Her strategy of pushing her stans to the breaking point of what they’re willing to support speaks to how well she plays the game.
Online, she berated her fans for falling for the “cash grabs” on her older music, including the anomalous pop-rap on Hot Pink (2019) and extraterrestrial assortment on Planet Her (2021). Even when her fan accounts started to shut down, she celebrated being freed from their expectations, saying: “Seeing all these people unfollow makes me feel like I’ve defeated a large beast that’s been holding me down for so long.” Her relentless verbal attacks throughout Scarlet, often directly addressing the listener as “you,” serve to completely sever any remaining parasocial ties.
All three Scarlet singles (“Attention,” “Demons,” and the chart-topping “Paint the Town Red”) echo the same sentiment: She said what she said, she never gave a fuck, and she’s the fastest-growing bitch on all your apps now. But this bravado isn’t always successful, especially when she defends her relationship with comedian and streamer J. Cyrus, who has been accused of manipulating and emotionally abusing members of his Twitch team and community. “Hope you can handlе the heat, put your name in the streets/Get used to my fans lookin’ at you/Fuck what they heard, I don’t fuck with them birds,” she raps on “Agora Hills,” an archetypal Doja Cat love song that suffers by echoing her contention that her fans are “miserable hoes” for mentioning the allegations on social media.
“We been making very many people upset,” Doja Cat boasts on “Wet Vagina.” The song is reminiscent of her early-career rap releases on SoundCloud, birthed from bursts of creative energy unhindered by external pressure. That’s another thing she’s bothered about — the idea that her skill as a rapper was being crushed under the weight of her success as a pop artist. Though the album often feels disjointed, Doja Cat tries to return to that space here. She forgoes pop in favor of songs like “Skull and Bones,” which bites back at whispers that she sold her soul, and “Ouchies,” which dips into a Lil Wayne-esque flow even more pointedly than her homage to Nicki Minaj on Planet Her’s “Get Into It (Yuh).” (It’s also worth 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 back into pop music’s good graces on the strength of her music.)
Doja Cat, at least on some level, can’t shake what people have to say about her. Across the record, she revisits criticism with detailed precision, having had time to mull over reactions to her shaved head, or her body, or her fashion choices, or her reluctance to fall in line. As long as she doesn’t have to give up any of that autonomy, she doesn’t care if she has to keep reloading ammo in the trenches. From day one, Doja Cat has been burning the pages of the rulebook on pop stardom. In their place, she’s filed case studies on the fragility of virality — crucially, how to navigate the sticky trappings that bind artists to the particular sound or persona that defines them from an early moment — and Scarlet is just another chapter.
Scarlet closes with “WYM Freestyle,” a bewitching rap record that sounds like it should be blaring out over Gotham City. Here, she pulls back the curtain on her long con: “Always knew I was gon’ change from the beginning.” Even when she’s preternaturally preoccupied with what’s happening in her mentions, she has plans in place for building her empire, like the lavish life she details on “Balut.” And her self-awareness breaks through the surface on “Love Life,” where she raps: “I love it when my fans love change, that’s how we change the game.” It’s the closest she comes to calling a truce with them. Yet, such moments are short lived. On Scarlet, pop’s ultimate edgelord is seeing red and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get the last word.