Doja Cat Makes the Leap From the Internet to the Arena Stage

More than most artists on pop’s current A-list, the 28-year-old rapper and singer Doja Cat is a child of the internet. Born Amala Ratna Zandile Diamini, she spent much of her youth making beats and rabble-rousing social media posts. She first experienced viral fame in 2018 when her goofy but surprisingly well-executed novelty song “Mooo!” blew up, and still — even after racking up bona fide hits, including two that ranked No. 1 on Billboard — retains the glint-eyed, anarchic spirit of an internet troll.

Just as screen charisma doesn’t always translate IRL, not every terminally online musician can convincingly make the leap from, say, Instagram Live to the 19,000-capacity Barclays Center, where Doja headlined her first New York City arena show as part of her Scarlet Tour on Wednesday night.

She has been a near constant presence on the charts for almost four years, but as a live performer she is still largely unproven. Her dreamy, disco-inflected breakout hit, “Say So,” was released in January 2020 and, during the pandemic, became a TikTok sensation.

There have been hints, though, that she can handle a large stage with flair. Many of her awards show numbers have been showstoppers, announcing her as an electric performer willing to take unexpected risks. During a pretaped appearance at the 2020 MTV Europe Music Awards, she reimagined the bubbly “Say So” as a brooding nü-metal anthem — and actually pulled it off. At this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, she vamped her way through a transfixing medley from her latest album, “Scarlet,” including the brash, rough-edged diss track “Demons.”

“Demons” was the second song Doja Cat played during her commanding, confident and occasionally repetitious hour-and-a-half set at Barclays Center, which featured an opening set from the rising star (and Bronx-born hometown hero) Ice Spice. For that track, Doja Cat was joined by an animatronic spider nearly twice her size, a reference to the dark, occasionally nightmarish aesthetics of the uncompromising “Scarlet.”

Prowling around a triangular stage that sometimes spurted fire, and flanked by a nimble troupe of dancers dressed as if Kanye West had designed the costumes for “The Warriors,” Doja was at her best when she was free to rap with dexterity and chest-thumping bravado. “Attention,” the sharp, self-assured first single from “Scarlet,” was a highlight, along with a few deeper cuts from the album, including the buoyant, lusty “Gun” and the imperturbably laid-back “Balut,” which has a vintage boom-bap vibe.

In an age of fan service and stan armies, Doja Cat’s relationship to her listeners has been unique, even antagonistic. In July, she generated headlines when, on the social media platform Threads, she refused some fans’ requests to tell them she loved them (“i don’t though cuz i don’t even know y’all,” she replied) and criticized those who had chosen to call themselves “Kittenz.” Rude? Honest? You be the judge. But at a time when most pop stars are expected to cater to their most vocal fans to the point of infantilization, a dissenting voice can be refreshing.

Doja’s online barbs didn’t seem to diminish the enthusiasm of the adoring fans at Barclays, some sporting Halloween-store devil horns (a reference to her recent hit “Paint the Town Red”), a few wearing cat ear headbands, and several having already changed into the most sardonic offering from the merch table, a white T-shirt that proclaimed its wearer’s “hate” for Doja Cat, emphasized with an expletive.

Throughout her set, Doja wore an outfit that was provocatively unprovocative: a form-fitting, full-body muscle shirt, imprinted with chiseled abs, bare breasts and exposed buttocks, which she paired with tall suede boots that extended up to her hips like chaps.

In her own absurdist way, it was a Doja Cat power suit, lending her an exaggerated physicality and a playful androgyny that she controlled depending on how she moved her body. She could pantomime sexualized femininity one minute — while, say, twerking with her back to the audience — and conjure masculine swagger the next, strutting around the stage in a wide stance. At times, it felt like Doja (ever a student of ’90s hip-hop) was playing both characters in the video for Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson’s 1998 collaboration, “What’s It Gonna Be?!”

The softer side of Doja Cat, though, is something she hasn’t yet learned how to communicate on an arena stage; a brief interlude when she sat on a stool and indulged in some R&B crooning was less than captivating. The performance of the pop hits from her previous era, “Say So” and “Kiss Me More,” felt rote, even if “Kiss Me More” featured a crowd-pleasing kiss cam.

Doja often suggests on “Scarlet” that she is more at home making razor-edged rap songs than surefire pop hits, and her stage presence backed that up. Still, at an arena show, a musician must find a balance between challenging audiences and keeping them in their seats. The show could have used more visual variety, and its structure — superfluously divided into Acts I through V, though devoid of a narrative arc — was puzzling. When Doja finished the last of her biggest hits, her recent No. 1 “Paint the Town Red,” she still had seven more songs to go.

Before a sultry, downbeat cover of “Red Room,” by the Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote, Doja, from her stool, briefly addressed the audience. New York, she said, “is where my mother’s side of the family is from, so I know this place a little bit.” The crowd cheered; modern concert rhythms had primed us to expect that this was the scripted part where the pop star would drop the armor and let us in on something personal, vulnerable, maybe even tear inducing. But she didn’t.

Instead, ever the trickster, Doja Cat just thanked the opener and — enrobed in that costume that gave the cheeky illusion of nakedness — introduced the next song.

Doja Cat’s Scarlet Tour, which comes to the Prudential Center in Newark on Thursday, runs through Dec. 13 in Chicago; dojacat.com/tour.