On 'Scarlet,' Doja Cat finds power harnessing the darkness of online vitriol

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/29/ [login to see] /doja-cat-scarlet-review-trolling
"Do yourself a favor and Amazon One Click yourself a copy of The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin's trenchant 1976 book length essay of film criticism. I'm fond of the section when Baldwin skewers William Friedkin's 1972 horror classic The Exorcist, thumbing his nose up at the film's banal, phony take on demonic possession. Baldwin's point: any conscientious person will know that real evil has nothing to do with the film's levitating beds and pea soup vomit special effects. Evil has more to do with what the film cannot, and will not say, about racial terror in a country that values the immateriality of stocks and bonds over the materiality of human life. "He who has been treated as the devil," Baldwin cuts to the chase, "recognizes the devil when they meet."

MC, singer-songwriter and edgelord Doja Cat recognizes the devil, and she's fiendishly rapping about it on her fourth studio album Scarlet, her most artistically adventurous to date. Some backstory is necessary. Doja Cat first rocketed to viral success with "Mooo!" an absurdist 2018 Soundcloud trifle in which she rapped from the perspective of a cow. Highly media savvy, Doja Cat put forth a persona, at her career outset, that was exactly what you'd expect from a musician who first connected with fans as an Internet meme: equal parts silly, irreverent and bratty. 2019's Hot Pink transformed Doja Cat into an overground sensation, a brash shapeshifter serving up hip-hop, pop, R&B in equal measures — the Dr. Luke co-penned nu-disco bop, "Say So," became her biggest hit".