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Doja Cat, aka She of the Many Spiders, has sadly let the solar to set on one of many quirkiest album rollouts in recent reminiscence — even by Doja requirements — with the discharge of Scarlet, her fourth LP. The 15-track album, which incorporates the singles “Attention,” “Paint the Town Red,” “Demons,” and “Balut,” is out now.
But what an online she wove to get so far.
In May, she began tweeting issues like “scarlet was here” and “scarlet’s watching” and “let myself heal, scar finally sealed.” She topped that in June with some blood-splattered art work and launched “Attention” with video of her saying, “Look at me, look at me. You looking?” And all this was after she mentioned she was altering her identify to Emcee Flapchunks the third, which nonetheless type of has a pleasant ring to it. She additionally mentioned on the time she had a brand new tune referred to as “Wet Vagina,” which not like the Flapchunks identify, turned out to not be a joke, and that the brand new album could be “rock/spoken word” and titled Moist Holes (a joke!).
“I’ve been messing around with name ideas for the album and have like 8 of them that I’m deciding between,” she instructed Rolling Stone that month. “I’ll be announcing the real title soon. I’ve been reconnecting with the music that I was raised listening to; Erykah Badu, John Coltrane, Nineties hip hop…the music that influenced me as a kid. I think my new music will bring some of that inspiration forward.”
Then she launched “Attention” and introduced her first-ever enviornment trek, the Scarlet Tour with Ice spice and Doechii opening. Normal sufficient, proper? Well, Doja waited a month to return with “Paint the Town Red,” a observe she previewed together with her portray a canvas bloody, and formally rolled out with a surrealistic video.
Doja formally introduced Scarlet, her first new file since 2021’s Planet Her, on the finish of the month, and that’s when issues began getting actually surreal. The album artwork featured a pink spider designed by an artist referred to as Dusty Ray. Around that point, web sleuths seen the identical spider on the quilt artwork for an album by a German hardcore band referred to as Chaver. Neither Doja, Dusty, or Chaver commented on why the 2 information had the very same spider — and Doja deleted her album announcement. When she posted new artwork, it was … two spiders, additionally illustrated by Dusty Ray. Once once more, the announcement got here with little fanfare and was rapidly adopted with the video for “Demons,” which featured Christina Ricci.
She closed out her lengthy Scarlet preamble with “Balut” and a medley of “Attention,” “Paint the Town Red,” and “Demons” on the MTV VMAs. Doja debuted the file with followers at Spotify’s “The Scarlet Experience” in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, marking the event with a portray created reside with the phrases “Not Afraid.”
Thus ends the ballad till a couple of years from now when Doja releases one other new album… hopefully with much more spiders.
