\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>s this just another troll? Doja Cat\u2019s new album is titled Vie \u2013 French for \u201clife\u201d \u2013 and the original artwork (changed at the last minute) features the 29-year-old Angeleno surrounded by roses, ever the picture of congeniality. Doja has become known, in recent years, as mainstream pop\u2019s master agitator: she tells her superfans to \u201cget off your phone, get a job and help your parents with the house\u201d, disavows her own hits before they\u2019ve even left the upper echelons of the charts and is totally unapologetic about what can be described, charitably, as edgelord behaviour. Doja\u2019s 2023 album Scarlet \u2013 a prickly, antagonistic record designed to prove her bona fides as a rapper \u2013 seemingly shut the book on her time as a pop hit-maker with a bracing, refreshing meanness.<\/p>\n <\/span>The (new) artwork for Vie.<\/span> Photograph: AP<\/p>\n So there is precedent for the notion that Vie\u2019s lead single Jealous Type \u2013 a piece of slick, cinematic 80s pop of the kind Doja used to toss off with abandon \u2013 was a fake-out. It\u2019s not exactly that: Doja\u2019s fifth album does find her returning to the sugary, aerodynamic well of her 2019 LP Hot Pink and 2021\u2019s Planet Her. This time around, it feels as if she and producer Jack Antonoff have found a more comfortable middle ground between the gloss of that world, which she\u2019s criticised over and over again, and the desires of the brilliantly snarky fire-starter who tore her way through Scarlet.<\/p>\n Hearing the push-and-pull between those sides of Doja is enormous fun. AAAHH MEN! is like a sinister take on Chic\u2019s Le Freak, its blown-out, sleazy strut a perfect soundtrack for Doja\u2019s conflicted internal monologue: do I want to take a guy home for sex, or just to lambast him? It\u2019s hard to tell which she\u2019s leaning towards: \u201cI have too much tolerance \/ You ugly and fine as shit \/ And if I had more common sense \/ Then I would grab my ride and dip,\u201d she raps, clearly relishing the opportunity to trifle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>Doja Cat: Gorgeous \u2013video<\/span><\/p>\n More often, it\u2019s a sweeter side of Doja taking hold, although rarely the uncomplicated sexpot of early singles such as Say So. On Silly! Fun! she raps with flustered abandon about being in love for the first time over the kind of dazed, lovesick production that wouldn\u2019t sound out of place on a Chappell Roan record. When she raps \u201cI\u2019m in love<\/em>\u201d or \u201clet\u2019s have kids<\/em>,\u201d the final word of each phrase is sung by a disembodied backing vocal, like she wouldn\u2019t dare say it out loud \u2013 a charming, canny detail. Doja has said she probably wouldn\u2019t listen to this music herself, but she\u2019s locked in nonetheless, applying the same detail to frothy pop songs as she does to one-liners such as: \u201cHe ain\u2019t hungry for money \/ I told him: \u2018Come eat the rich.\u2019\u201d (See seventh track All Mine.)<\/p>\n Can a leopard change its spots? That seems to be the question Doja is trying to answer musically and lyrically across Vie. She is smart enough not to give any clear answers, ending the album with Come Back, a glowing, bitter love song that shares a strand of its DNA with Donna Lewis\u2019s I Love You Always Forever. \u201cI\u2019m pleased I ain\u2019t the bitch you was hopin\u2019 for \/ If we keep this up and you hold my doors \/ And you take my bag, and you hold me more \/ I don\u2019t think that would make up for the hope I lost,\u201d she raps, weariness coating every inch of her voice. There\u2019s no trolling here \u2013 just an earnest relationship postmortem, set to production that\u2019s so twinkly and lovesick it would make even Carly Rae Jepsen blush. A leopard can\u2019t change its spots, but maybe Doja Cat can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is this just another troll? Doja Cat\u2019s new album is titled Vie \u2013 French for \u201clife\u201d \u2013 and the original artwork (changed at the last minute) features the 29-year-old Angeleno surrounded by roses, ever the picture of congeniality. Doja has become known, in recent years, as mainstream pop\u2019s master agitator: she tells her superfans to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5011,14689,13824,7405,686,1141,14687,1085,9508,14688,5562,13825],"class_list":{"0":"post-24112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cat","9":"tag-difference","10":"tag-doja","11":"tag-master","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-pop","14":"tag-provocateur","15":"tag-review","16":"tag-spice","17":"tag-splits","18":"tag-sugar","19":"tag-vie"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}