Doja Cat’sPlanet Her is one of 2021’s biggest albums and it all starts with the opener, “Woman.” The song quickly became one of the album’s favorites and now, Doja had gone ahead and made a video for it.
The Teyana Taylor-featuring video sees Doja flaunting her femininity on Planet Her as she dances to the Afrobeats track. At one point, she borrows a page out of the “WAP” playbook by dancing in a shallow pool of water. Overall, the clip is full of striking environments and costumes, making for an aesthetic visual to accompany the rhythmic song.
As for the song (which she co-wrote with Jidenna), it sees Doja offering praise of the fairer sex, as she kicks off the opening verse, “What you need? / She give tenfold, come here, papa, plant your seed / She can grow it from her womb, a family / Provide lovin’ overlooked and unappreciated, you see.” She later stands up for the roadblocks that women face: “Gotta face a lot of people of the opposite / ‘Cause the world told me, ‘We ain’t got the common sense’ / Gotta prove it to myself that I’m on top of sh*t / And you will never know a god without the goddesses.”
Throughout their nearly four decades as an awards show, the MTV VMAs have historically been a way for musicians to experiment with their style. Lady Gaga’s 2010 raw meat dress became one of the most-recognizable pop culture moments, and who could forget Lil Kim’s purple pasties at the 1999 VMAs red carpet? As someone who thrives at the intersection of hip-hop and pop genres, Doja Cat has definitely taken a page out of Gaga and Kim’s playbooks when it comes to her own style. Whether she’s delightfully draped in chiffon or wearing an actual stool on her head as a hat, Doja toes the line between shocking and playful — proving she’s having more fun with fashion than anyone else in music.
When it comes to her style, part of Doja’s shock value success comes from her commitment to a concept. It’s been an important part of her artistry from her breakout moment and is abundantly clear from watching her music videos, performances, and eyeing her show-stopping red carpet looks. Throughout her career, Doja has leaned into cat-like looks to go along with her namesake, caught disco fever with the ‘70s-inspired outfits following the release of her No. 1 track “Say So,” and gone out of this world with a futurist approach to her ensembles surrounding the era of her latest album, Planet Her.
Doja’s videos make it clear she has stayed true to an aesthetic from the very beginning. She fully leaned into the title of her song “Moo!” in a video that became her first viral moment. The green screen-backed visual saw the singer dressed head-to-toe in a cow-print outfit and sipping on a strawberry milkshake while she shouts, “B*tch, I’m a cow.” Her outfits in the video to “Bottom B*tch,” a song which samples Blink-182’s “What’s My Age Again?,” brought pop-punk into a new decade by taking style elements from Spencer’s-obsessed teens like mesh tops and neon beanies while adding a modern twist with stringy corset tops and a patterned two-piece set. Fast-forward a few years and most of her videos to the tracks from Planet Her now revolve around an extraterrestrial theme. She and SZA were giant femme fetal space dwellers in “Kiss Me More,” while Doja transformed into a seductive, green, metropolis-living alien in her “Need To Know” video.
Doja’s conceptual style also plays a major role in her live performances. She played up the feline-lover origins of her moniker with her Vevo Lift performance of “Say So” in 2020, which added campy elements to distinctly classic styles. Her wig was bobbed and curled in the style of Marilyn Monroe, while its hot pink color and fuzzy cat ears made it her own. Her accompanying outfit was a Garo Sparo bodice with a sweetheart neckline cut to mimic the Playboy bunny cocktail waitress outfits-turned popular Halloween costumes. But instead of being made from satin, Doja’s outfit was cut from hot pink furry cloth, once again nodding to her cat-like look. “There’s something mysterious about the concept of a ‘crazy cat lady,’” she said in an interview alongside the performance. “I took that symbol and applied it to my character, Doja Cat.” When it came to her recent 2021 performance at the Balmain Fashion Show in Paris, her concept was a bit more open-ended. Rather than formatting her look after an animal, the singer said she wanted her look to give the energy of “sexy garlic.”
Doja has long positioned herself as a fashion boundary-pusher, so she is always right at home on the red carpet. In fact, some of the singer’s most experimental looks happened at award shows. When it comes to the VMAs, Doja hasn’t held anything back. When she took the virtual stage in 2020, the singer showed up in an ensemble that can only be described as a sexy fish, complete with lit-up genitalia. A year later while hosting the ceremony, the singer accepted a VMA award in a head-to-toe padded quilt dress designed by Thom Browne that Doja compared to a colorful worm. “I never thought I’d be dressed as a worm while accepting an award,” she said.
Her “sexy fish” VMAs outfit is, to no one’s surprise, not the only look Doja has worn that draws attention to her… nether regions. At the 2020 AVN Awards, aka the “Oscars of porn,” the singer showed up in a skin-tight mesh bodysuit that sparsely covered her crotch in rhinestones. The look expertly combined the disco-inspired era “Say So” with the theme of the night, an outfit her stylist would later call her “Cher moment.”
Whether she’s posing in a glittery merkin, accepting an award dressed as a neon worm, clomping around in massive chicken claw-like shoes, many of her wildest outfits have one thing in common: they were designed in collaboration with her stylist, Brett Alan Nelson. While Doja has always had her own style, there’s no denying that Nelson has helped take her fashion to the next, sometimes bizarre, level. As a central part of Doja’s team since 2019, Nelson is drawn to over-the-top, theatrical styles. “She and I get each other so well,” Nelson said about his work with Doja in an interview with Vogue. “We bicker like brother and sister, but I know her, sometimes better than she knows herself. She’s down to have fun, take risks, and she trusts me, which in my industry, that is the best thing a creative could ever ask for.”
Vevo already had a knack for helping artists create live performance videos of their songs that felt like mini-concerts, but that platform has only been more useful in the midst of a pandemic. Now that it’s been months since most of us have been out to see our favorite artists on tour, these live slices of artists performing their new work is as close as it comes lately. Since the release of her long-awaited album Planet Her, Doja Cat has almost had to pick and choose which singles to promote, there’s so many good options on the record’s extensive tracklist. Clearly, though, one of her personal favorites is “Need To Know,” and it was one of the last singles to be released before she finally announced the album’s release date back in June.
In this new clip, Doja wears a futuristic high-fashion black look while perched out in the middle of the desert, singing the song while casually sitting on a cliffside. Eventually, she stands up and makes her way to the middle of a clearing where she can stretch out a few dance moves during an interlude. Check out the clip above, as well as her earlier collaboration with Vevo on “Ain’t Sh*t.”
When you get to be an artist of Doja Cat’s stature, it’s inevitable that you at some point won’t be able to control everything about your brand. While Doja presumably has final say over things like her music and cover art, it appears she’s not as involved with the merchandise side of things, because she thinks the merch she’s currently offering isn’t good.
Over the weekend, a fan shared an image of one of the t-shirts in Doja’s merch store, which features a photo of her in a skimpy pink outfit and wearing a pink dual-pointed headpiece. The tweet was captioned simply with question marks, and another fan replied, “who is designing this new batch of merchandise lol.” Doja quoted that tweet and responded, “i don’t know.” She quickly followed up, “the merch is bad. i’m aware. don’t worry.”
Another user tweeted, “b*tch i ain’t buying a hat for THIRTY FIVE dollars… nawt me sorry bae,” to which Doja responded, “i understand.”
Aside from the aforementioned shirt and hat, Doja’s online shop currently offers designs based on NASA logos and generic-looking Planet Her imagery, printed on crop top shirts, t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, and sweatpants.
It’s been about two weeks since Doja Cat dropped her astrology-inspired “You Right” video featuring The Weeknd, a track off her otherwordly Planet Her album. The singer has now shared some behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot where, true to the video’s theme, Doja researches her astrology sign. In doing so, Doja finds out that she’s apparently very comparable with Paul Rudd.
The behind-the-scenes footage opens with Doja calling up her mom to find out the exact time she was born, a crucial piece of information needed for finding out an astrology birth chart. Doja’s birth chart describes her as “committed and assertive,” to which she responds, “Oh. This is about me being a b*tch.”
Using the same app, Doja looks up Paul Rudd’s birth chart to see if they are compatible. Doja reads off the results: “Right away, Paul might have seemed familiar, like you two were close friends or family in a past life. This sense of shared history creates an ease of comfort between you and a deep sense of immediate trust. It’s like Paul’s the kind of friend you can let down you guard with, you can be yourself with.” The singer then mentions, “I’ve never met this guy, but that’s very weird because his demeanor is very much like my family, which is very strange.”
Doja then checks her compatibility with Beyonce, which is apparently her “strongest connection.” The app says the two musicians would make “incredible allies,” and Doja seems to agree.
Doja Cat may have already put out a deluxe version of her recent album Planet Her featuring Gunna and Eve, but that hasn’t stopped fans — and some of Doja’s peers — from campaigning for a remix featuring just one more rapper whose visual aesthetic matches Doja’s well: Yung Baby Tate. The Atlanta rapper posted a video of herself freestyling to the instrumental from the exuberant Planet Her song “Get Into It (Yuh),” sparking interest in an official remix featuring the verse.
Although Doja’s already released the album and a deluxe version, if anyone were to advocate for a sharp rapper like Tate, it’d be Doja Cat, who explained when releasing her new album that she put rappers like Gunna, JID, and Smino on her projects to highlight her love for “bars.” Certainly, Tate is someone who’d have worked with Doja had they crossed paths earlier in their careers; her breakout project, GIRLS, featured collabs with female rappers like Bbymutha, Kari Faux, and Latto (formerly Mulatto).
Both rappers will be busy this year, though, with Doja touring Planet Her and Tate appearing on Love & Hip-Hop. Additionally, Doja made it clear that she doesn’t plan on doing too many more collabs going forward because she doesn’t want them to sound like mashups — but since this verse already exists, maybe she can make an exception.
Watch Yung Baby Tate’s freestyle video above.
Yung Baby Tate is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
After collaborating with artists like Ariana Grande and The Weeknd, Doja Cat seemingly has joint tracks down to a science. The songs she wrote with other artists were important in boosting her music. She even earned her first-ever No. 1 single for her Nicki Minaj “Say So” collaboration. But Doja Cat says collaborations can also hinder her artistry at a certain point, which is why her fans shouldn’t expect to hear her on many in the future.
Following up on her Planet Her album, Doja Cat sat down with Ebro Darden for Apple Music. During their conversation, Doja Cat explained that, going forward, she only wants to focus on career moves that give her energy.
“Sometimes I do stuff that maybe I don’t feel as excited about. I try not to do that, I do that maybe five, six percent of the time in my career,” she said. “But right now, I’m trying to do what I want to do for the most part. I want to really develop myself and not regret anything. I think I have to think more about what I’m doing now.”
Doja Cat continued that part of her artistic development includes focusing on her solo music and shying away from collaborations in the future:
“I like to say this a lot, but, Michael Jackson and Prince [were] not doing a lot of collabs all the time. They almost have no collabs. You look at that, and you’re like, they were doing fantastic without anybody. I like to, not compare myself — I definitely sound like I’m doing that but I’m not trying to — but that’s my bar. I want to focus on what is best for me. At this time and in this age, everybody is collabing. What happens is that things sound like mashups, like fan mashups. They’ll put Nick’s verse with Meg on ‘Kiss Me More’ or they’ll put my verse on ‘WAP’ or something. I don’t want it to feel like that anymore. I want it to feel very special, and very carefully done. So, I’m trying not to do as many collabs in the future. I think it’s important.”
Listen to Doja Cat’s full interview with Ebro Darden on Apple Music above.
Doja Cat recently flexed her multifaceted talent on her album Planet Her. But just over a year ago, people on the internet were calling for her to quit music entirely. Fans on Twitter were rushing to cancel the singer after old, insensitive videos of her surfaced in chatrooms with reported members of the alt-right/incel community. The singer apologized, but wasn’t fazed by the controversy as she’s apparently used to getting canceled.
Doja Cat recently sat down for an interview with Big Boy, where she discussed her album, a recent mishap at the dentist, and her celebrity crush (Reggie Watts.) But when Big Boy asked how many times she thinks she’s been canceled on the internet, the singer joked that it’s happened “maybe 350 times:”
“Starting from age 6 to age 25, maybe 350 times. My mom cancels me, my brother cancels me, my schoolmates canceled me — everybody cancels me. I cancel me, my boyfriends have canceled me. Not in a way where it’s like a huge political down power of something crazy that I did. It’s just, canceling is a fight on the internet, and that’s how I see it. It’s a fight for something and I’ve been in pressure where I feel like I’ve had to fight. And I’ve done that my whole life, so anything that happens, I come right out the other side just okay.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Doja sang The Weeknd’s praise over their “You Right” collaboration, saying he was the “sweetest” artist she’s ever worked with. “He’s a good friend of mine. He’s like part of my family, I feel like,” she said about the singer. “We met maybe two or three years ago. But he’s the sweetest artist I ever collaborated with—no shade to anybody else. But he is top notch, the sweetest person, and brilliant, very talented.”
Watch Doja Cat’s full interview with Big Boy above.
Planet Her is out now via Kemosabe/RCA. Get it here.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
It’s been a while since mainstream pop stars got absolutely weird. Thankfully, artists like Doja Cat are carrying on the legacy of the likes of Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj, while saving the mainstream pool from getting dull.
“All the goofy kids, or the kids who don’t put themselves on a pedestal, or are just not normally accepted — I feel like making that example is good for those kids,” Doja said in her April Billboard cover story. “Because maybe they felt like they could never make it in an industry where everybody is so serious. It’s important that they know they have a lane.”
Staying true to her guts is mainly the reason for the 25-year-old’s rapid ascension, who thrives off of testing a whole myriad of boundaries. Whether it’s refusing to stick to one lane (she flips through rap, R&B and pop with ease), unleashing variousrenditions of “Say So” because she grew tired of performing the original version, or rocking the kookiest of outfits (2018’s viral “Mooo!” look being the most notorious), it’s clear Doja Cat lives for the thrill. So much so that she left Planet Earth and invited fans inside her new Planet Her album.
Arriving today, the 14-song collection finds the artist at her most confident. 2018’s Amala debut and 2019’s Hot Pink showcased her impressive versatility. Those albums were a yummy trail mix of talents, and Planet Her is the glue that brings it all together.
The album opens with the Afrobeats-inspired “Woman”, drifting listeners not to another planet — but the motherland. Similar to Amala’s “Wine Pon You” featuring dancehall star Konshens and Hot Pink’s “Won’t Bite” that samples 1945 Swahili love song “My Angel (Malaika)“, “Woman” is a hip-shaking celebration of the African diaspora. While bringing her heritage to the forefront (Doja’s father is South African), she shout outs Rihanna’s admirable CEO status as well as her own “divine feminine” allure. Later on “Alone,” Doja channels Rih’s come-hither attitude.
Women’s bodies double as a place of worship, and Doja Cat continues to highlight every inch of her curves on “Naked.” The artist has grown even more comfortable in her skin, and embracing sexuality is an integral theme on Planet Her. It’s best executed on the seductive “You Right.” Here, Doja reunites with The Weeknd, whom she previously collaborated on his “In Your Eyes” remix last May. The Weeknd, who is fresh off his ‘80s-inspired After Hours era, has retired the red suit and briefly returns to the dark sluttiness that longtime fans have been longing for. “But this sex will cloud your memory. A couple strokes will put an end and you’ll belong to me,” he urges in hopes Doja will leave her man.
One of Doja’s best traits is how she shapeshifts her sound to compliment guests. Along with “You Right,” she’s a gracious host on Planet Her, melding her tone to pair with Ariana Grande’s signature sultry coos on “I Don’t Do Drugs” and pumps up Young Thug for a glorious battle of the rap weirdos on “Payday.”
But there are stale moments to be avoided on Planet Her, including the forgettable “Been Like This” and “Imagine.” “Get Into It (Yuh)” is a SoundCloud rapper parody, which may or may not be a nod to when she first blew up on the streaming platform with 2012’s “So High.” What saves the track is the absolutely adorable Nicki Minaj shoutout towards the end, a reminder that the OG rapper is not only an inspiration but the one who pushed the “Say So” remix to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
And then there’s the shadow of Dr. Luke: In 2014, Kesha hit the pop producer/songwriter with various allegations including rape and emotional abuse. The year prior, Doja Cat signed to his Kemosabe Records and hasn’t acknowledged the working relationship. Dr. Luke’s career has remained intact and has credits on “Need To Know,” “You Right,” and “Kiss Me More,” which is difficult to shake off.
But songs like “Ain’t Sh*t” and “Need To Know” help the album achieve its vision. The former, which Doja first previewed on Instagram Live last April, will satisfy fans who’ve awaited its official version. The stripped piano melody of “Ain’t Sh*t” calls back to Elton John’s 1974 classic “Bennie And The Jets,” but that original song’s sincerity is sharply juxtaposed with Doja’s beloved dry humor and a rightfully fed up attitude of the opposite sex (“You should’ve paid my rent / Got get a f**king job!).
“Need To Know” is the best song on Planet Her: an otherworldly joyride driven by the mad scientist that is Doja Cat. She’s in true alien form here: a raunchy freak, cooing baby, helium sucker, and frantic spitter over a galaxy of ice-cold trap melodies. Lyrics like “I don’t play with my pen / I mean what I writе” and “Oh, wait, you a fan of the magic? / Poof, pussy like an Alakazam” is Doja getting deep in her cocky rap bag and it’s exciting to hear.
If Doja Cat’s multiple live performances that highlight her classically trained dance skills, the feast of music videos that call back to the glory days of Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott, or the expertly twisted wordplay weren’t enough, then Planet Her will solidify her star status. As Earth continues to slowly crumble — from climate change to social injustices — I’ll gladly book a one-way ticket and escape to Planet Her.
Planet Her is out now via Kemosabe Records/RCA Records. Get it here.
The wait is finally over. After teasing her third album, Planet Her for the better part of the last year, Doja Cat has finally graced her fans with its release. The project arrives after she spent most of 2020 promoting songs from her second album, Hot Pink. This includes the chart-topping “Say So” and the TikTok favorite “Streets.” All of that is in the past now as Doja begins the third chapter of her career for Planet Her with a brand new video for “You Right” with The Weeknd.
The new track is also accompanied by a majestic video that follows Doja as she walks through an elegant palace as she details her desires for a man despite being in a relationship with another one. Planet Her was led by two singles, “Kiss Me More” with SZA and “Need To Know.” The former was an effort that submitted itself onto the list of song of the summer contenders. The duo also performed it at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards. The latter was a track Doja delivered to hold fans over until the album’s release. All in all, Planet Her arrives with additional features from Young Thug, Ariana Grande, and JID.
As for what’s next, Doja will soon make an appearance in the second season of Lil Dicky’s TV show, Dave, and take the stage alongside Justin Bieber, Lil Baby, and more for the Made In America festival.
You can watch the video for “You Right” above.
Planet Her is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.
(@yungbabytate) 