Review: Doja Cat wraps up her Scarlet Tour in Chicago — a new artist with a veteran’s confidence

Doja Cat had a packed audience seeing red Wednesday at United Center. Literally and figuratively. Performing the final date of her Scarlet Tour, the rapper-vocalist coordinated most of the visual features of her show around the primary color. Emotionally, she conveyed it with her welled-up anger and sultry passion, leaving little room for anything in between.

Blending foundational elements of choreography, theater, television and burlesque with imaginative fantasy, explosive glitz and thematic lighting, the highly involved concert production benefited from crisp pacing and lots of energy. Akin to Doja Cat, a limber dance ensemble almost always seemed in motion. Located in separate pit areas, a support band and backing vocalists lent songs body and dynamics frequently absent at shows reliant on backing tracks.

Despite a few flaws and inconsistencies, those decisions (and others) helped Doja Cat appear not as someone on a debut arena tour but as a veteran aware of what works and what halts momentum. Case in point: She left the expected costume changes to her peers and, save for a full-length fur she quickly shed, played all 95 minutes in the same red outfit. Specifically, a cropped bustier with leather straps and strategically placed devil horns; arm sleeves; a riff on knee-high leg warmers; and, ahem, a thong. This woman isn’t shy.

Four albums into a career that caught fire in summer 2018, Doja Cat remains an established and constant pop-culture presence. Her resume includes award nominations from nearly every major music organization, Top 10 hits and a record for being part of the first female rap duo to land a No. 1 song (“Say So,” with Nicki Minaj). A flood of collaborations with big-name contemporaries such as The Weeknd, SZA, Ariana Grande, Post Malone and Lil Nas X speak to her mainstream currency. Ditto the California native’s role in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial and her recording of the lead single for the “Elvis” soundtrack.

Her rise — and ability to stay at the forefront of pop’s here-today, gone-tomorrow environment — reinforces the power of online platforms for artists of a certain generation. For better or worse, the rapper born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini continues to leverage social media to promote and provoke.

Fittingly, Doja Cat’s breakout stems from a do-it-yourself video she created for her novelty track “Mooo!” It became a viral meme and established a pattern wherein the singer turns to the Internet to map a majority of her moves. TikTok and its associated dance challenges are central to her chart success. Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) advertise her eccentric personality.

They also spark controversy. This summer, Doja Cat lost a half million Instagram followers after arguing with fans over her life choices and their role in her affairs. Prior backlashes regarding her use of offensive language, alleged association with racist chat rooms, her dismissals of COVID and a claim she was quitting the industry further underscore the risks associated with stars who maintain a very public profile in the 2020s.

To her credit, Doja Cat made the transition from the online universe to major-headliner status with the kind of extroverted allure, confidence and zaniness that inform her posts. At the United Center, two tall video boards located at the left and right sandwiched a narrow stage whose triangular point jutted out onto the floor. The screens broadcast live footage and blew up Doja Cat to IMAX proportions. During the disco wanderlust of “Kiss Me More,” they transformed into the equivalent of phone screens animated with TikTok-like graphics and kiss-cam interactions.

Imagery, anchored by the synchronized routines and coordinated apparel of the dance squad, factored prominently in the five-act event. Props — ranging from spindly arachnoid to a walking eyeball wired to a cord that doubled as an optic nerve — complemented a steady array of fireworks, fireballs and fog. In addition to the monochrome saturation of red, Doja Cat expressed eerie vibes and, occasionally, hinted at more sinister trappings by keeping everything relatively dark. All the better for fightin’ words.

Feisty, vulgar and confident, Doja Cat swaggered and taunted, bounced and challenged. The take-on-all-comers braggadocio she proclaimed on the opening “WYM Freestyle” always loomed near the surface — even when she opted for softness, chilled out and allowed infatuation or lust to temper frustrations (“Agora Hills,” “Often”). If anyone needed a reminder of her mood or intent, her body language communicated with as much assuredness and clarity as her words.

Particularly since lyrics tended to drown amid the low-end din of bass-dominant material such as “Demons” and “Go Off.” Doja Cat’s low-to-the-ground crouches, forward leans, wagging fingers, subtle clothing adjustments and militant stances expressed the intended messages. Overtly sexual not only with narratives, the rapper crawled on all fours during “Need to Know” and sang “Can’t Wait” amid a mass of human flesh before lying down and being straddled by the members of her ensemble.

Doja Cat as temptress came in second to her persona as intense combatant. Rapping, she spat lines with a fluid flow and slight rasp that suited the grittiness of the content. Punctual grunts, syllabic interjections and rapid-fire clips reflected a keen command of rhythm and phonetics. She attacked bangers like the scolding “Shutcho” and seething “Attention” with the aggression of a pugilist putting an opponent against the ropes. Her arms-crossed determination extended to the top-down, window-ratting joy ride of “97″ and deceptively casual feel of “Paint the Town Red,” an assertive statement of purpose that appropriated its strolling groove from the Dionne Warwick classic “Walk on By.”

She’d be wise to cede soulful pursuits to others. Doja Cat’s balladic deliveries and falsetto stretches encountered rough patches. Whether owing to venue acoustics or otherwise, her voice sounded thin and pinched when following R&B and pop guises. Relatedly, an attempt at smooth, laid-back jazz on a cover of Hiatus Kaiyote’s “Red Room” fizzled and found her straining for a higher range. And though a pent-up desire to prove herself has served her well, Doja Cat’s clever name-checking of cultural references failed to carry over to some of her cruder insults and rhymes. Equally crass? Advertisements beamed on the screens for apps, video games, concert merch and other products shortly after opener Ice Spice finished her set.

By contrast, Doja Cat possessed a presence of mind to move beyond her second and third LPs, records that in May she deemed “cash grabs” that fans “fell for.” Her main focus concerned “Scarlet” and a deeper foray into hip-hop.

“I am here because I can rap really, really well,” she declared after entertaining with a semi-impromptu freestyle. That, yes, as well as a knack for knowing how to translate the routines and risks of recurrent online exposure into reward.

Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.

Setlist from the United Center Dec. 13:

“WYM Freestyle”

“Demons”

“Tia Tamera”

“Shutcho”

“Agora Hills”

“Attention”

“Often”

“Red Room” (Hiatus Kaiyote cover)

“Balut”

“Gun”

“Ain’t [Expletive]”

“Woman”

“Say So”

“Get Into It (Yuh)”

“Need to Know”

“Kiss Me More”

“Paint the Town Red”

“Streets”

“(Expletive) the Girls (FTG)”

“97″

“Can’t Wait”

“Go Off”

“Ouchies”

“Wet Vagina”