Doja Cat

One Liner: Top shelf raunchy pop with raps that sound like Nicki Minaj

Wikipedia Genre: Hip hop, pop, R&B, pop rap
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 2
Both Weekends.

Saturday at 6:20 on the Lady Bird Stage.

Thoughts:  I feel like this is going to be a post where someone tells me to stay in my lane.  I've never understood the appeal of what little I have heard from Doja Cat.  I recall seeing some sort of Twitter dust up about her years ago and going to check out a few tracks, and feeling underwhelmed.  More recently, when my teenage daughter saw this lineup, she was excited about seeing Doja on there, so I have a feeling this is going to be a show I don't need to attend.  But, I just wrote all of that before diving into her music at all.  Let's go on a voyage of musical discovery, shall we?

Real name is Amalaratna Dlamini.

"Kiss Me More" is her top single, with a whopping 530 million streams.  One interesting thing about the current state of music is that I have definitely never heard this song before.  Released in 2021 and apparently very popular.  It feels like a massively popular song from 20 years ago would have been inescapable, even if I didn't listen to that particular genre's radio station.  Like, I wasn't searching our Mariah Carey back in the day, but I sure as hell heard a bunch of her songs a million times.  But, this single is a pretty good little pop song.

Catchy, danceable groove.  And the lyrics kinda made me grin.  Nothing ground-breaking or new to any of it, but perfectly pleasant dance pop.  But the lyrics are also a little nasty - and a few songs later, I'm realizing that she got a penchant for some nasty lyrics.  "Dick" (I know, the title should have fully explained this) would make a great companion piece with "WAP" in the Fox News Moral Freakout Broadcast.  A lot of these tunes sing explicitly about her P and the action it receives.

Oh, wait, I recognize one of these - "Say So" has even more streams - 806 million! - and is a fun little disco party that feels tailor made to do some serious roller skating to.

Oh!  I thought that Nicki Minaj was on that track - Doja's raps sound just like she is copying Nicki.  Interesting.  The groove and funk of that track is very fun.  Again, sounds like something that Dua Lipa started before.

Interesting (to me at least) aside here - I saw something on Twitter not long ago - one of those question prompts where someone throws out a prompt and then waits for everyone to respond with their answer.  Said something to the effect of "what was a lie the older generation told us."  And someone I follow answered with "that disco sucks."  Which stuck in my head for two reasons.  One, because I think that's true.  Disco is flipping fun and catchy and groovy and funky.  Two, because I saw a response that stuck in my head saying that it was racism that caused people to start claiming that disco sucked, as white folks tried to destroy the popular black music of the time.  Fascinating.  But glad it is on the comeback swing right now, because more fun is a good thing to me.

Three albums - I think the first one is the one that put me off of her in the first place.  2018's Amala starts with an ode to cunnilingus and never really moves on from that sort of crass subject matter.  The big track is "Candy," with 207.4 million streams.

I always find it interesting when a hit song doesn't get a video made to go along with it.  Seems like, once this one blew up, they would have come along afterwards and made a visual for people to see.  Pretty good track - the bass is great and the sugary innuendo is legit.

She's been controversial for a long time, but last year she was "cancelled" (temporarily, it would appear) for some bad acting.  "While videos and photos of Doja Cat saying the N-word, stripping, and hanging out in an alleged alt-right Tinychat room went viral, internet sleuths unearthed more insensitive videos, tweets, and even music."  If you want to run through all of the controversies about her, you can read them all here.  I think she's just an insensitive idiot or looking for attention.  Actually, that doesn't even have all of her controversies, as I see that she's also said dumb shit about COVID.

Honestly, I kinda like the new album.  2021's Planet Her has some fun tunes.  Dammit.  "Get In To It (Yuh)," even though the name of the song is horrible, actually made me look up from my work and check out the song name, because its a snappy good time.  And "Kiss Me More" got stuck in my head while I just made lunch.  "You Right," featuring The Weeknd, is actually good.  Dadgum.  I had expected to be able to crap all over this stuff, but its actually good pop music.  Kind of doubt I'd see it, just because she is likely up against Modest Mouse, Phoebe Bridgers, or Jack Harlow, but this is surprisingly good.