After seemingly denouncing the pop-leaning Planet Her and Hot Pink, Doja Cat has joked about dropping a rock/spoken-word album and, alternately, vowed to lean more heavily into hip-hop and rap. She delivers on the latter promise with “Attention,” the first single from her forthcoming, as-yet-untitled fourth studio album.
Doja recently told Rolling Stone that the new album is influenced by ’90s hip-hop in particular. And, indeed, the hypnotic “Attention” opens with the sounds of a gentle harp and the distant, ominous howls of a wolf before a crisp breakbeat straight out of 1995 kicks in, as the rapper-singer waxes sensual about how “it” is “hungry” and seeks “affection.”
Throughout, Doja claps back at her critics over her appearance (“Lost a lil’ weight, but I ain’t never lost a tushy/Lookin’ good, but now my bald head match my [pussy]”) and social media presence (“Talk your shit about me, I can easily disprove it, it’s stupid/You follow me, but you don’t really care about the music”). She drops an in-character reference to the comparisons she’s received to Nicki Minaj, but her flow here nods more to Lauryn Hill.
The influence of the ’90s extends to the visuals for “Attention.” The video, directed by Tanu Muino, opens with Doja riding up on a crowd of shrieking fans and paparazzi, flashbulbs shrinking her pupils. The faces in the crowd soon become distorted, evoking Madonna’s similarly themed clip for “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” from 1998.
In yet another ‘90s touchstone, Doja walks down the street in a black leather coat, clipping shoulders with passersby a la a stone-faced Richard Ashcroft in the Verve’s iconic video for “Bittersweet Symphony.” “Attention,” however, doubles down on the macabre, with shots of strangers on the street donning featureless, flesh-colored masks intercut with brief shots of Doja naked and covered in blood.
Watch “Attention” below:
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