It sometimes seems like Doja Cat lives her entire life within the 9:16 box of an Instagram Story. The 28-year-old American rapper and singer is a true internet-era celebrity, a performer who owes her hits (as well as the occasional controversy) to the whizzy virality of social media. As she walks out at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro arena on Tuesday to kick off her UK stadium tour, I wonder how someone so eminently online will approach a large-scale live experience. From the opening rendition of the pugnacious, Drake-like “ACKNOWLEDGE ME”, which she performs while flanked by two large angel wings made of hair, it’s clear the answer is: with verve.
Doja (real name Amala Dlamini) begins the night wearing a long, blonde wig, an oversized, unbuttoned shirt and lingerie; after a couple of songs, the shirt is gone. It’s at this point too that the energy lifts, as she launches into a propulsive performance of “WYM Freestyle”. Almost every song she goes through tonight is drawn from last year’s album Scarlet, or this April’s expanded re-release, Scarlet 2 CLAUDE. Both were top-to-toe hip-hop records, a pointed departure from the pop-leaning material that preceded it. Lyrically, her concerns were largely unchanged: topics such as sex, fame, the internet, herself.
