Doja Cat (2025) [NO LONGER COMING!!!]

Welp, NEVERMIND!

Her jenky statement she gave on social media says: "Unfortunately, I will not be performing at Austin City Limits this year. When I made the commitment I didn’t know exactly when Vie [her next album] would be released. I’ve been working on finalizing the album, making videos, taking the time to put together an album campaign that I am really excited about, and it’s become clear to me that I cannot give you guys the show you deserve within this time frame. Thank you to the ACL team for their support and I hope to see you all again soon when the time is right. I’m forever grateful for the opportunity.”

That is some bullhonkey.  I had no clue that it was going to take time to release a new album, and so now I can't come perform for an hour and a half?  I'm sure no other artist who has ever been to ACL was also releasing a new album in the month prior to the show!  That is super freaking annoying, even if it actually is good news for me because now the Killers will be here instead.

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: HEADLINER!
Both Weekends.

Sunday at 8:30 on the AmEx Stage.

Thoughts:  If you would have asked me when she was last here, I would have said 2 years.  Ends up it was 2021.  However, even though I previously wrote about her, I could not tell you a single song that she does or tell you if she has been in the news cycle at all in the years since then.  I am pretty much just going to use the last post I wrote about her, with some thoughts about new music at the end.

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.  According to Wikipedia, she caught viral fame in 2018 as an internet meme when "Mooo!" became a thing about her claiming to be a cow.  Freaking weird, man.  She was born in L.A. in 1995, to a Jewish mother and South African father.  He was apparently a Broadway performer who ended up on tour and abandoned his family before moving back to Africa.  Doja has accused him of being a deadbeat and that she has never met him.  At one point, she joined a professional poplocking troupe in high school.  Which is a very funny thing to say.  She ended up dropping out of high school to pursue music.  She started surfing the internet all day, finding beats to add vocals to and uploading things to Soundcloud.

"Kiss Me More" is her top single, with a whopping 2.170 BILLION steams (up from 530 million streams in 2021).  It features SZA, FYI.  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 1995 would have been inescapable, even if I didn't listen to that particular genre's radio station.  Like, I wasn't searching out 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.  Also won a Grammy for Best Pop Duo Performance.  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 a dumb number of streams too - 1.307 billion (up from 806 million in 2021) - 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.

Four 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 631.2 million streams (2021 count was 207.4).

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 in 2020 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.  I think she is just VERY online, and raised in that arena where that sort of thing was normalized.  Who knows.

Honestly, I kinda like the 2021 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.  "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.  

2023's Scarlet starts out with a tune that I have for sure heard as well - pretty sure my kids have played "Paint the Town Red" around the house or in the car.  This album definitely feels more like a rap move, and less like a pop thing like those earlier albums.  And she keeps it nasty - I'll give you one guess about the subject of "Wet Vagina."  There is still other stuff here too - "Often" makes me think of Eryka Badu.  The top track, but a lot, is that "Paint the Town Red" one.  1.4 Billion streams.

Nothing much to it, but it is obviously touching a nerve with the youths to have garnered that many streams.  TikTok, man.  I guess it is pretty catchy.

My original thought was that there is no way I'd go see this, but honestly, its better than I expected.  And on top of that, nothing else is happening on Sunday night, so I might as well go watch the rapper go to town.  This is better than I expected.