Doja Cat’s arachnidemonic no-features rap album would really like a phrase with anybody who ever mentioned that she’s probably not a rapper. Scarlet asserts Doja’s capacity to rap, and her proper to be multi-talented and tough—“tough artwork” is excessive reward. If solely something about Scarlet have been tough. It’s reactive and repetitive, pairing unsurprising takes on traditionalist hip-hop with sharp retorts to final season’s insults. Conceptually, the album is pitched someplace between Rico Nasty’s Anger Administration and Taylor Swift’s Popularity, a razor-edged heel flip that has at all times one thing to show. It’s most likely the largest album to be so involved with posting, which doesn’t give it the blockbuster high quality it deserves.
Doja Cat has answered doubters earlier than, as soon as saying that “it’s effective if folks assume that I can’t rap,” however Scarlet—working title First of All—implies possibly it isn’t anymore. In one among many spring-summer 2023 tweets later deleted, however not earlier than they made headlines, Doja wrote, “i additionally agree with everybody who mentioned the vast majority of my rap verses are mid and corny…. I simply get pleasure from making music however I’m getting bored with listening to yall say that i can’t so I’ll.” Scarlet’s comparatively straight-ahead method to hip-hop feels like ’90s boom-bap retrofitted with an eye fixed to modern pattern drill, rage, and cloud rap. Frequent Lil Yachty collaborator Earl on the Beat has a hand in 4 tracks together with singles “Paint the City Crimson” and the dreamy love music “Agora Hills”; Jay Versace is behind essentially the most California-sounding beats, channeling West Coast old style on “97” and L.A. beat scene on “Usually.” A beneficiant pattern funds pays for traditional materials just like the Ric Aptitude soundbite on “Balut” and Earl’s Dionne Warwick pattern, the primary sound on the album: a dove of peace over Evil Doja’s shoulder in “Paint the City Crimson,” the No. 1 hit that’s a precise match for her fake-bloodied, take-no-prisoners horrorcore persona.
After the opening “Crimson” and “Demons,” Scarlet is a purgatorial run of equally paced songs that play like progressively shallower echoes of the singles’ delight and bluster. Second to second Doja’s efficiency is dynamic—candy falsetto, thick nasal drawl—however her writing could make her sound like a sore winner bringing playground taunts to a flame warfare (“You appear like a butter face”) and flatlining on “Love Life” as she congratulates her enterprise staff. Remy Ma, who final yr reported that the Doja Cat fanbase “got here for my life” after she’d mentioned she didn’t consider Doja as a rapper, deserves a refined dig hidden in a stream of punning wordplay on “Ouchies,” and Doja spends not somewhat time beefing with those self same “extremist” superfans on her personal behalf, commentating on minor controversies and reminding them that each hate click on counts.
