Doja Cat feels misunderstood.
In a new conversation with Ebro Darden, Doja gives further context to some of the imagery found in the video for her Scarlet album cut “Paint the Town Red.”
When Ebro points out that that’s where the narrative about her being a Satan worshipper begins, Doja asks, “Because I’m wearing red?” to which he says, “Right.”
She adds, “Because I'm fucking wearing red. Me wearing red is a crime.” In the first half of the visual, the artist is seen wearing a red, long sleeve, floor-length dress with gloves and a hood—and her pupils are red to match.
"I like this visual for this sound," she explained. "You interpret it how you want to interpret it. Everybody has the right to interpret it how they want. But this whole-very confident satanism thing is like, 'I'm sorry, when the fuck did I say that I was a satanist?' When did I ever say anything?"
"Anyway, it's really tacky and annoying and fucking discredits a lot of the hard work that I've put in. It discredits a lot of the hard work that a lot of people have put in. I know from on the inside what I've seen is a lot of hardworking artists who are inspired and are doing the fucking work that they need to do to create these beautiful atmospheres. It's not real. When you see a fucking CGI dragon fly by a screen, it's not a real dragon, but people really feel that way."
She also reveals that she painted the green monster that she's seen riding at the very beginning of “Paint the Town Red."
“I wanted to paint that. My painting isn't a fucking weapon. It's not offensive. It's just a green, goblin monster guy. I thought it was beautiful," she explains. "That was a really big piece for me, literally, and also figuratively."
She continued, “It was one of my most proudest moments ever and people wrote that off as satanism. It's literally just a little green guy with horns, and I'm standing on his head, where's the harm?”
Elsewhere, she discusses the meaning behind the Scarlet track, "Fuck the Girls (FTG)": “It’s me saying f*ck Stan Twitter. Because there's that obsessiveness behind it, all the malice towards women in Stan culture," she explains. "Calling women 'mother,' and expecting them to give and deliver and serve for the purpose of just serving, and not just expressing themselves."
“Paint the Town Red” still saw major success on the Billboard Hot 100, landing Doja her second-ever No. 1 single—and becoming the first rap track to hit the chart in over a year.
