Doja Cat made music festival herstory Sunday, as she became the first female rapper — and only the second Black woman, after Beyoncé — to headline Coachella. Doja had much to prove, as some pundits and haters had questioned if she possessed the star power, or the extensive discography, to close out such a massive festival. But Doja effectively destroyed those doubts.
The 28-year-old MC held the audience in thrall from the moment she performed the fittingly all-caps'd "ACKNOWLEDGE ME" in a space-age hazmat suit, until her surreal sci-fi spectacle devolved into its id-driven, literally messy finale, "Wet Vagina," during which she and her dancers orgiastically writhed in primordial mud.
Never had beige seemed more exciting. Doja's most recent album may be titled Scarlet, and her biggest hit titled "Paint the Town Red," but for her Coachella set (a "'scientific' exploration of the self," as she described it to Vogue), she and creative director Brett Alan Nelson painted a singular vision in creams and whites.
The effect was all at once prehistoric and futuristic, a "textural fever dream," a swirl of albino hair and bleached dinosaur bones, of plastics and silicones, of dirt and sweat.
Over the course of 95 kinetic, kinky minutes, Doja underwent six ash-toned costume changes, including a wooly white cavewoman bikini paired with custom Timberland boots-with-the-fur and alien-eyed Bono shades; molded-silicon armor that made her resemble Svedka vodka's fembot mascot; an Alexander Wang-inspired shibari rope bondage suit; and a yeti-like bespoke "hair monster" two-piece fashioned from 40-inch, platinum-blonde extensions.
Doja explained to Vogue that she wanted her show to feel "almost like you've fallen into my hair and dove through my head and into my thoughts," in one theatrical moment shaving off her Quest for Fire pelts as part of her ongoing onstage metamorphosis.
But Doja wore the clothes; they never wore her. She was just as much a superstar when standing alone on a caution-taped stage, shrouded head-to-toe in radiation-resistant rubber, as she was when flanked by leotarded Fosse dancers, a specter of flesh and fun fur, looking like the star of some Aronofsky-ian, Kubrickian remake of One Million Years B.C.
Doja kept a yellow-rubber-gloved grip on the attention of her fans — who, on Coachella's coldest and gustiest night, looked like sci-fi movie extras themselves, huddled on the Empire Polo Field's scorched earth in their tinfoil blankets — even when she was joined by special guests like Teezo Touchdown (for the live debut of "MASC"), 21 Savage (for "N.H.I.E."), and A$AP Rocky (for "URRRGE!!!!!!!!!!"), and even when she eschewed some of her poppiest hits (like "Kiss Me More," "Say So," and "Woman") in favor of her newer, harder-hitting material.
The only time Doja ceded the stage — literally, during her first and longest costume change — was when a South African a cappella quintet, aptly named the Joy, performed, rapturously harmonizing in Zulu and adding just the right pinpoint of sunshine and light to Doja's dystopian desert mirage.
At the beginning of this hallucinogenic, hot-and-cold fever dream, Doja was introduced by a 30-year-old whispered quote from another famous pop shapeshifter and disruptor, Madonna: "Express yourself, don't repress yourself." And after this startling triumph, whoever headlines Coachella 2054 just may be quoting Doja Cat onstage.
Doja Cat's full Coachella setlist was:
ACKNOWLEDGE ME
Shutcho (with the Joy)
Demons
Tia Tamera
F--- the Girls (FTG)
Gun
OKLOSER
Ouchies
N.H.I.E. (with 21 Savage)
Attention
97
Balut
Need to Know
MASC (with Teezo Touchdown)
Streets
Agora Hills
Ain't S---
WYM Freestyle
URRRGE!!!!!!!!!! (with A$AP Rocky)
Paint the Town Red
Wet Vagina
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