Grizz Lee
For this yr’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year undertaking, Billboard is counting down our employees picks for the highest 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 9, we bear in mind the yr in Doja Cat — a persistently difficult and profitable pop star who hardly ever makes it simple for her followers, however continues to build one of the vital very important and rewarding careers in 2020s pop.
When she entered 2023 with 5 Grammy nominations – off the again of a Post Malone collab, a late-stage Planet Her single and a success from the Elvis soundtrack – Doja Cat knew one thing the remainder of us didn’t fairly but get: We’re not eliminating her anytime quickly. After reaching prime 40’s zenith with the frothy Planet Her two years prior (the album peaked at No. 2 and spawned 5 consecutive prime 20 hits), Doja Cat spent 2023 setting fireplace to that pop-forward model of herself – and he or she nonetheless proved to be one of many yr’s most dominant pop stars within the course of.
Before Doja attended the Grammys in a black latex robe that signaled a stark tonal and aesthetic shit from the pink and purple hues of Planet Her, she took on Paris Fashion Week whereas decked out in head-to-toe crimson physique paint and 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals – an immediately viral second that reaffirmed Doja’s singular wielding of vogue in her larger artist undertaking and additional proved the irrefutability of her star energy. The punk and horror influences in her new wardrobe would quickly reverberate via the remainder of her 2023 – however, then once more, these seeds have been actually thrown when she shaved her head final summer season: an aesthetic resolution that grew to become a key image of the Scarlet period.
Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Year: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake
Doja’s first piece of recent music got here by means of an April “Kill Bill” remix, the year-defining hit single from Grammy-winning “Kiss Me More” duet accomplice SZA. Her Eminem-nodding visitor verse used the tune’s boom-bap-infused beat as a catalyst for Doja’s intentional repositioning as a rapper within the “traditional sense.” Her remix helped push “Kill Bill” to the highest of the Billboard Hot 100 – though chart credit score evaded her on this case – and primed followers for her new period.
Jacob Webster
Jacob Webster
She kicked off the next month on the MET Gala with a purr-fect ensemble impressed by the late Karl Lagerfeld’s pet cat, however that second rapidly gave strategy to Doja’s first main controversy of the yr.
“[Planet Her] and [Hot Pink] were cash-grabs and yall fell for it,” she wrote on Twitter (now X) on May 9. “Now [I] can go disappear somewhere and touch grass with my loved ones on an island while yall weep for mediocre pop.” Ironically, the hits from these albums helped Doja win the songwriter of the yr award she accepted from the BMI Pop Awards that very same day. After garnering legions of followers due to her pristine pop-rap bops, Doja appeared hellbent on obliterating that; giant parts of her fan base have been extremely vocal of their objections to Doja’s remarks, however the tirade didn’t derail her yr.
“Attention,” the primary style of Scarlet, arrived on Jun. 16, incomes a heat reception from critics, who lauded Doja’s give attention to deft lyricism and her additional exploration of these boom-bap influences. Fans greeted the tune with a extra middling reception; “Attention” spent simply three weeks on the Hot 100 and peaked at No. 31. Doja went a bit quiet after “Attention,” however she got here again with an much more contentious tirade the next month. “My fans don’t get to name themselves s–t,” she wrote on Threads. “If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f–king ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.” Once once more deliberately antagonizing her fanbase, Doja discovered herself embroiled in an argument that examined shoppers’ persistence together with her, in the end culminating in practically 240,000 misplaced Instagram followers in below every week.
Nonetheless, as she proved together with her notorious career-threatening chat room controversy again in 2020, Doja Cat has 9 lives – and perhaps a couple of further. The Grammy-winner rapidly turned her fortunes round with “Paint the Town Red,” a bouncy Dionne Warwick-sampling monitor that grew to become each her highest-debuting solo tune and the primary hip-hop tune to prime the Hot 100 in 2023. The tune grew right into a juggernaut on radio – it’s spent seven weeks atop each Pop and Rhythmic Airplay – and have become ubiquitous on TikTok with out the assistance of an over-arching dance problem or development, additional cementing her as star that strikes the tradition, not one which occurs to be buoyed by one among its myriad waves. “Paint” topped the Hot 100 the identical week Doja stole the MTV Video Music Awards with a three-song medley — “Paint,” “Attention,” and horrorcore-leaning promo single “Demons” — that reminded audiences of her efficiency prowess and gifted shoppers the primary take a look at Doja’s imaginative and prescient for Scarlet in a stay setting. At the ceremony, “Attention” picked up a Moonperson – Doja’s fifth – for finest artwork course.
Although Doja had totally fleshed out her Scarlet alter ego by the VMAs, she was nonetheless attempting on completely different titles for the document. (Remember Hellmouth? First of All?) Moreover, the singles have been a far cry from the “no more pop” and “French conceptual experimental country/bohemian fusion with the essence of bluegrass” descriptors she (typically jokingly) gave to followers. Nonetheless, Scarlet arrived in all of its jazz rap-meets-lo-fi-meets horrorcore glory on Sept. 20. Reviews have been favorable, however unimpressive first week numbers (No. 4, 72,000 models earned) signaled that Doja couldn’t fairly translate the success of “Paint the Town Red” to its guardian LP. Fans have been nonetheless exhibiting up for her, however they didn’t fairly love what she was dispensing, a few of which included sporting an ill-received t-shirt that includes alt-right comic Sam Hyde.
As she did with Planet Her, Doja appears to be enjoying the lengthy recreation with Scarlet. Her Ice Spice and Doechii-assisted headlining area tour has been trekking throughout the U.S., and “Agora Hills,” an instantaneous Scarlet standout – is already rising into the album’s second main hit, at present sitting at No. 24 on the Hot 100. With Scarlet, which ended 2023 as one of many Billboard employees’s 10 favourite albums of the yr, Doja challenged each her followers and pop music at giant greater than any of her contemporaries. That fearlessness didn’t at all times repay, nevertheless it did at all times preserve her on the forefront of the dialog – additional cementing her as arguably essentially the most constant pop star of the 2020s, and one among solely 4 artists to look on all three Greatest Pop Star prime 10 rankings Billboard has accomplished this decade.
