Doja Cat, Always Underestimated, Has the Last Laugh on the Fiery ‘Scarlet’: Album Review

Doja Cat has upset some of her fans again after posting and then deleting a photo of herself wearing a shirt featuring the comedian Sm Hyde. The comic, who is seen with bleach-blonde hair and brandishing a gun on the pop star's shirt, has ties to both the alt-right and neo-Nazi movements.

Doja Cat has posted a photo with an alleged Neo-Nazi on her shirt.Yesterday (October 6), the American musician (real name Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini) uploaded a selfie to Instagram. On her shirt, the face of controversial comedian Sam Hyde was identified by Twitter users.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Albums, mixtapes, singles, soundtrack songs, collaborations, features, one of the biggest concert tours of the year — it seems like there’s barely a moment of the day when Drake isn’t adding to his sprawling discography, which, with the release of “For All the Dogs” at 6 a.m. ET today, has grown to nine full-length albums since 2010 — four in just over two years — seven mixtapes since 2006, and so much more. They’re always long AF too, clocking in at an hour or much more, and with 23 songs spanning almost 85 minutes, “Dogs” is no exception.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Live Nation’s “On the Road Again” plan, announced Tuesday, says it will deliver “tens of millions of dollars” for artists and touring crews by by providing $1,500 in gas and travel cash per show to all headliners and support acts, on top of nightly performance compensation, at venues the company owns, operates or exclusively books. Those clubs will also charge no merchandise-selling fees, so artists keep 100% of merch profits.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music There’s little question that the Birthday Party — Nick Cave’s first major band — was one of the most aggressive and confrontational groups of the ‘80s if not all of rock history. Their bruising, brutal sound and genuinely dangerous concerts are the stuff of legend, but as Cave’s intensity has been channeled into more-refined and less-blunt art, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how genuinely crazy the Birthday Party’s concerts were.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As someone who purchased “Tim,” the Replacements’ 1985 major label debut, on the day it arrived in my local record store, I can say the following with absolute certainty: If the remixed, significantly beefed-up version of the album that dropped last week had been released in 1985, the group would have been crucified by the indie-rock morality police, and it probably would have destroyed their career. Make no mistake, the new version sounds amazing: The original, produced by the late original Ramones drummer Tommy Erdelyi in a sort of homage to Phil Spector, was a muddled mess, with the instruments blurred together and an indistinct, heavily reverbed sound.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music When Megan Thee Stallion pulled out of her scheduled performance at the Global Citizen festival in New York earlier this month due to an “unforeseen scheduling conflict,” it took about five minutes to do the math and realize — oh, Beyonce’s playing in Houston that night. Not only did she and Megan team up for the “Savage Remix” back in 2020, they’re both from Houston.

Doja Cat to next-level stardom — earning her a Grammy Album of the Year nomination and a win for the SZA-assisted “Kiss Me More” — it almost set her up for the sophomore slump, even though it was her third LP.But the 27-year-old rapper and singer — born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini — had already avoided that before her fourth album, “Scarlet,” dropped on Friday. She hit No.

Doja Cat's new album Scarlet is finally here. The fourth album from the pop star born Amala Zandile Dlamini arrives after a bumpy, fascinating, yet undeniable successful months-long promo campaign: Doja successfully alienated hundreds of thousands of fans for refusing to say that she loved them, yet scored a No.

Doja Cat has responded to criticism of her album artwork for ‘Scarlet’, saying she doesn’t care about “satisfying” her fans.The album, which was released today (September 22), was announced last month with artwork that many saw as identical to German metal band Chaver‘s new album ‘Of Gloom’, also out today.Doja Cat then shared a new and markedly different album cover by the same artist, and told one fan on X/Twitter: “The art I chose for my album is beautiful and I like it a lot. The two spiders signify conquering your fear.“None of my album covers had meaning until this album.

Doja Cat‘s new album Scarlet is out now and she took to Twitter just hours before its release to defend the artwork.

Debby Friday is the winner of the 2023 Polaris Music Prize. The Nigerian-born, Toronto-based electronic artist's latest project Good Luck, which featured the Song You Need-playlisted "So Hard To Tell," was selected by a panel of Canadian journalists and industry professionals as the country's best album of the year.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Speaking to Entertainment Tonight Canada at the world premiere of his biographical documentary “Sly,” Sylvester Stallone called himself “the last of the dinosaurs” while praising his career longevity. The “Rocky” icon was referring to the fact that he’s one of the few ’80s action stars left continuing to headline movies, which is the case with the upcoming fourth “Expendables” movie. He’s also the lead of the Paramount+ series “Tulsa King,” which has been renewed for a second season.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music After months of rumors, Katy Perry has sold her music rights to Litmus Music, the Carlyle-backed company co-founded by former Capitol Records president Dan McCarroll, for $225 million, the company announced Monday. The deal includes Perry’s stakes in master recordings and publishing rights for the five albums she released between 2008 and 2020: “One of the Boys,” “Teenage Dream”, “Prism,” “Witness” and “Smile.” Universal Music Group continues to own the masters to those albums.

Sylvester Stallone walked the red carpet at TIFF 2023, on hand to promote “Sly”, a new documentary about his life and stunningly successful Hollywood career that’s closing out this year’s festival.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music It’s been 17 years since Sean “Puff Daddy/ Diddy/ Love” Combs made a solo album, and he’s more than made up for lost time with “The Love Album: Off the Grid.” In the conversation below, he describes the album as a “Super Bowl of R&B,” and the list of guests bears out that title: everyone from the Weeknd and Justin Bieber to Summer Walker and H.E.R. to Babyface and Mary J. Blige make featured appearances, but it sounds like a Puff album every step of the way.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Contemporary music is filled with great unreleased albums — the Beach Boys’ “Smile,” Marvin Gaye’s “Love Man,” the Clash’s “Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg,” David Bowie’s soundtrack to “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” multiple titles from Prince, Kanye West and Neil Young — many of which were never truly existed in anything resembling finished form. Usually, such albums turn out to be overblown in terms of their significance, leaving die-hard fans trying to piece together the ultimate version of a tantalizing missing link in a beloved artist’s catalog from scraps that were never a whole in the first place.

Doja Cat will release her eagerly-anticipated new album Scarlet next week, September 22, and has already teased her fans (not for the first time) with the singles "Attention," "Demons," and the Hot 100-topping "Paint The Town Red." Today she has shared what is presumably the final release before the album, a song titled "Balut." It's another song in which Doja is in her rap bag, spitting lines like "I’m the shit, you a real piece of shit/ I am needed, you a real needy bitch," over a minimal but crisp beat. It's safe to say, at this point, that you can probably wave goodbye to the idea of a German rave album for the time being.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s board of directors announced Thursday that the company will sell two segments of its song catalog in a bid to increase its stock price and pay down debt. The statement, made in a dense 20-page document capably translated into plain English by Billboard, reveals that one package of assets includes 29 catalogs worth around $440 million, which the Blackstone-backed entity, Hipgnosis Songs Capital, has agreed to acquire.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The Rolling Stones have revealed the full track list of their first full album of original studio material since 2005, “Hackney Diamonds” — and the full list of guests. “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven” features vocals from Lady Gaga and keyboards and piano from Stevie Wonder, “Bite My Head Off” gets some inimitable bass from Paul McCartney, and “Get Close” and “Live By The Sword” have Elton John on piano.