Here Comes “Scarlet”
The current talk of the town, Doja Cat, took the stage Tuesday night at MTV’s Video Music Awards to perform three singles — “Paint the Town Red,” “Attention,” and “Demons” — featured on her next studio album, Scarlet which is set to drop on the 22nd.
Doja’s stage presence and commitment to showmanship made her performance, featuring red-painted demons dancing around her, a windstorm sweeping across the stage, and a well-covered mishap during the on-air wardrobe change, the most memorable and praised night.
Many viewers were shocked by how much they enjoyed the live version of “Demons” considering that many initially stored it in the same record bin as Cardi B’s “Bongos” — the music video’s production weirdly beating out the song’s quality.
Doja’s delivery of lines like, “I’m a puppet, I’m a sheep, I’m a cash cow / I’m the fasting growing bitch on all your apps now / You are tired of me ‘cause I’m on your ass now / You are mad at me ‘cause I’m all they slap now” are more potent on stage where her emotion and artistic direction are all-encompassing. Out of the three singles, “Paint the Town Red” is the most streamed on Spotify, “Attention” is the most sonically new for Doja, and “Demons” seems to, ironically, be garnering cult support.
In true star fashion, Doja is “hitting the pavement” to promote Scarlet. The Grammy Award winner capitalized on her Video Music Awards performance and further drummed up excitement for the project, in ways much more effective than a Twitter/X rant.
Doja posted a series of carousels to her Instagram, one posing with a wax figure designed of her on the cover of “Attention.” These wax figures have reportedly been popping up in random, public places. The rapper with a chip on her shoulder also seized the moment to post the full tracklist for Scarlet.
Scarlet’s tracklist solidifies Doja Cat’s commitment to disrupting the mainstream, with song titles like “Fuck the Girls (FTG),” “Skull and Bones,” and “Wet Vagina.” Quite the dramatic jump from her star-making “Say So.” The placement of the three singles on the 15-track album is also intriguing, “Paint the Town Red” and “Demons” are tracks 1 and 2 but “Attention,” the melodically most dissimilar from her established catalog out of the trio, sits at 14.
The track list was posted with the caption “no features.” This choice surely stems from Doja’s refusal to lean on the skills of anybody else to clear up the “she’s not a rapper” accusations thrown at her by hip-hop heads. This determination to prove her lyricism and flow is why Scarlet is shaping up to be Doja Cat’s most raw and distinctive project.
But Doja’s rollout continues on.
A website that only plays an anxiety-inducing, cryptic video has appeared online promoting Scarlet. If you’re quick to scare, you’ll find it hard to watch to the end as a camcorder recording of a person walking through the woods at night — surely another of Doja’s recent referencing of influential horror movies — with nothing but the crickets and the crunch of their footsteps heard drags on for a bit too long.
That is until a camera glitch occurs and the cameraman is holding up a piece of crumpled paper edged with blood. On the paper are a set of coordinates, a time, but no date. After putting the coordinates into an online GPS coordinator the address appears to be Tompkins Square Dog Run, East 9th Street, New York, NY 10009, United States of America. But what date should Doja’s kittens be there for the presumed listening party or even live concert? Friday, September 22nd seems like the best bet.
