Vie

‘Vie’ proves that Doja Cat remains pop’s ultimate shapeshifter, offering an album that moves, seduces and entertains on its own terms.

A record that reinforces that Doja doesn’t need to fit into one box to become the artist she’s meant to be. It’s a notion that she herself seems to have come to terms with, however trying (or public) it may have been, and “Vie” is all the better for it.

["Jealous Type" is] a savvy throwback banger, thrillingly evoking Janet Jackson at her most physical. Yet, as with all of Vie, it underscores Doja Cat's power as the diva who's in control here.

Hearing the push-and-pull between those sides [2019's Hot Pink/2021's Planet Her vs. 2023's Scarlet] of Doja is enormous fun.

The album feels like an amalgamation of its two predecessors; the rap energy from ‘Scarlet’ and pop punch from ‘Planet Her’.

Vie is a transitional record, yes, but its ambitious reach also makes it a necessary one. In its best moments, the album shows us that Doja Cat is at her most compelling when she stops trying to define herself, and instead allows her music to contain all her contradictions at once.

If Scarlet was the firestorm, Vie is the afterglow: still flickering, still restless, but finally willing to show the cracks that make the light come through.

Her flow can often be propulsive and deadly, and every so often, she strikes gold (“All Mine” and “AAAHH MEN!”). Even something like “Jealous Type”, one of Vie’s least cohesive mash of rap and pop, gets the job done.

On Vie, she veers closer to the high-gloss pop of her breakthrough albums Planet Her and Hot Pink — yes, the albums she later repudiated as “mediocre pop” done as a “cash grab.” (Nobody renounces her own hit albums faster.) But it’s the sound of Doja Cat at her most playful and unpredictable.

Although Doja clearly envisions Vie as her poppiest album, with ’80s pop as her aesthetic of choice, the record is most interesting when she’s ignoring such distinctions rather than embracing them.