Doja Cat on her album:
“I wanted to be like J. Cole and do the album with no features. He’s really the greatest rapper of all time & his impact is undeniable. His albums are mostly all him so his fans only hear him and resonate. I want that same impact.”
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.
