It generally looks like Doja Cat lives her whole life inside the 9:16 field of an Instagram Story. The 28-year-old American rapper and singer is a real internet-era celeb, a performer who owes her hits (in addition to the occasional controversy) to the whizzy virality of social media. As she walks out at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro enviornment on Tuesday to kick off her UK stadium tour, I ponder how somebody so eminently on-line will strategy a large-scale reside expertise. From the opening rendition of the pugnacious, Drake-like “ACKNOWLEDGE ME”, which she performs whereas flanked by two giant angel wings fabricated from hair, it’s clear the reply is: with verve.
Doja (actual identify Amala Dlamini) begins the night time carrying a protracted, blonde wig, an outsized, unbuttoned shirt and lingerie; after a few songs, the shirt is gone. It’s at this level too that the vitality lifts, as she launches right into a propulsive efficiency of “WYM Freestyle”. Nearly each music she goes by way of tonight is drawn from final yr’s album Scarlet, or this April’s expanded re-release, Scarlet 2 CLAUDE. Each had been top-to-toe hip-hop data, a pointed departure from the pop-leaning materials that preceded it. Lyrically, her considerations had been largely unchanged: subjects resembling intercourse, fame, the web, herself.
All through the primary tracks of of the night time, Doja strikes a bit stiffly, her face stony with focus; when, 5 songs in, she switches to an older favorite – 2019’s “Tia Tamera”, with its dextrous and catchy barrage of pop-culture references – you’ll be able to see her begin to have a very good time.
Scarlet was very a lot a “proof of idea” relating to Doja’s rapping credentials; tracks resembling “Get Into It (Yuh)” and the lure hit “Must Know”, a Nicki Minaj-inspired single from 2021’s Planet Her, let her actually flex this on stage. This latter quantity attracts some boisterous rapping-along from the loud however relatively static stalls part. It ends along with her guitarist stepping out centre stage for a protracted and squealy solo. (He’s wearing hair-covered trousers from the waist down, giving him the look of Mr Tumnus from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or as if an actor enjoying Chewbacca wanted to exit for a cigarette.)
Midway by way of the set, Doja tells the gang: “I received’t sing Hilary Duff this time, I’m not gonna do this.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to her Parklife set final week, when a canopy of Duff’s “Come Clear” drew bafflement from her viewers. That is fairly comfortably probably the most that Doja says between songs all night time. In her music, although, she’s loquacious – her lyrics may not have the depth or sophistication of a number of the style’s highest, however they’re slick and undeniably infectious.
On the one hand, the manufacturing is refreshingly low-maintenance for a 90-minute stadium gig: there aren’t any costume modifications and few elaborate group dances. What it does have is sufficient pyrotechnics to provide a remake of Backdraft, and an advanced set design concerned an elevating platform hung from the ceiling, which form of resembles a U-boat, or a protracted metallic baguette. Doja climbs onto this platform, harnessed, as she performs “Can’t Wait” and “Agora Hills”, auto-tuning her vocals over a affected person lure beat. She by no means appears fully comfy when she’s dangled some five-to-10 metres above the bottom, however she twerks by way of it anyway. The reside band, in the meantime, are organized on prime of what I first assume to be bales of hay; on nearer inspection, these too, are fabricated from hair.
A gig of this scale maybe requires a bigger and extra various repertoire to essentially draw from. Doja blasts by way of 24 tracks on the night time, however they start to bleed into one another. “Usually” is a lull – sparse and barely dissonant – and you may sense the vitality sap from the room. However the excessive factors are compelling: the snaky melodies of “Consideration”; the snappy and dynamic “Guidelines”.
The climax of the present comes along with her greatest hit, “Paint the City Pink”. It’s an enormous banger, and she or he clearly is aware of it: dangling the microphone within the path of the gang, she defers the staccatoed, barely off-kilter scansion of the verses to the word-perfect onlookers. The encore, “Moist Vagina”, struggles to essentially comply with it.
What we’re left with is an imperfect set, however an ideal showcase of Doja’s electrical confidence, what youthful gig-goers may name her rizz. There have been 4 backing singers on stage all through the night time, however I couldn’t let you know something about them. All eyes – and all cameras – had been skilled on Doja Cat. As they need to be.
Tickets for Doja Cat’s ‘The Scarlet Tour’ are on sale now
