Last month, the world-famous rapper Doja Cat released her fourth studio album, Scarlet. Die-hard Doja Cat fans, you may want to stop reading now. This album is lackluster at best, and we don’t have much else good to say about it.
The Beat
With little to no vocal melody, rap relies on its beat to carry the instrumental track. Unfortunately, the beat on most of the tracks on Scarlet is nothing special. It’s very stripped down, with almost no other instruments outside of the synthesized drums. There are no spectacular beat drops, almost zero changes in pitch, and very few deviations from the rhythm. You can forget about syncopation, as well. If you were so inclined, you could stand next to a trotting horse, listen to the sound of its hoofsteps, and get the same effect as Scarlet’s backing track.
Now, don’t get us wrong. This kind of minimalist, bare-bones approach to instrumentals can result in and has resulted in brilliant music in the past. But it’s best used as a platter on which to serve evocative melodies, brilliant rhymes, and/or inspiring lyrics. Scarlet doesn’t hold up on that account.
The Rapping
In place of melody, rap has rhythm. The lyrics of any given rap song are so intrinsically entwined with the beat that they’re almost impossible to separate, and in the hands of a master, the lightning-fast rhythmical twists and turns of the lyrics can be awe-inspiring to behold. You will never have thought that the human mouth could say so many words in a minute, and you will never have thought they could rhyme so evocatively either, with the ever-present beat punctuating key phrases like a firecracker.
Scarlet isn’t that kind of album. The rapping does fit in time with the beat, and it does rhyme – but the rhymes are, although adequate, fairly basic, and the rap progresses at a relatively slow BPM. Combined with the lackluster backing track, it almost doesn’t feel like a rap – it feels like Doja Cat is reading to you her poetry about how wet her vagina is and how she doesn’t deal with haters, while the neighbors hold a house party and you can only hear the bassline of their music (which, to give credit where credit is due, does match up with Doja Cat’s slam poetry delivery).
The Melody
Scarlet isn’t entirely rapped – there are a few songs on the album that are sung. But the melodies won’t be stuck in your head for the next week – or any amount of time likely. The hook of “Agora Hills” would be good if the pre-chorus hadn’t brought the rapped verse to a grinding stop beforehand. The chorus of “Skull and Bones” seems to slide around, formless and (ironically) boneless, while the chorus of “Can’t Wait” seems oddly detached from the baseline. There are no earworms to be found here.
A Skip for Scarlet
It’s respectable that Doja Cat is trying to be experimental with her melodies, but there needs to be balance. You can’t color outside the lines all the time – but Doja does, and the result is a mushy album with mostly bland backing tracks, little authentic flow, and melodies that just sound off. If you do stream Scarlet, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Scarlet is streaming now wherever you listen to music.