On Sunday night, the artist who got her humble start with the viral track “Moo!” completed a fiery and other-worldly set on the famed Coachella mainstage, shooting her already stratospheric career beyond juggernaut superstardom.
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On the third and final day of the first weekend of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, which had been put on pause for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was quickly apparent that Doja Cat’s set would be the historical performance of the weekend. Taking the temperature of the massive festival crowd throughout Sunday, it was clear that the Empire Polo Club grounds were Doja’s world and attendees were simply just orbiting until she took the stage that night to transport festival-goers to Planet Her.
As eager fans packed the far-reaching fields around the main stage, an anxious buzz set in as people speculated about the rapper’s setlist, surprise guests, and what kind of energy she would bring to the stage after being embattled in Twitter drama where she announced she “f***in quit” making music.
Eventually, the Southern California-born artist burst out onto the stage with an explosive rendition of “Woman,” the first track off her GRAMMY-nominated album, Planet Her. Doja quickly set the tone for festival attendees across the grounds, using pyrotechnics to warn viewers to buckle up for an interstellar ride.
As she bounced around from banger to banger off of Planet Her and Hot Pink, the artist consistently delivered on the ultra-polished Pop and Hip Hop star's expectations with hard-hitting choreography, and impenetrable rap skills. Delivering on the promise of a surprise guest, Tyga joined Doja to perform “Juicy,” a flirtatious and irresistible diddy about the singer’s perfectly bubbly backside. When Doja dropped the infamous line, “if you could see it from the front / wait ‘til you see it from the back, back, back,” the crowd roared with a zestful echoing back of the beloved lyrics.
After Tyga left the stage, the show quickly transitioned into a second act, giving viewers a taste of “Payday” during a brief but thoughtful interlude. Doja reappeared after a costume change, flaunting a psychedelic black and white Caroline Reznik two-piece set with matching leg warmers. As she performed with demon-like backup dancers and glided across a larger-than-life metal frame female figure set installation, the artist never skipped a beat while delighting fans with a live debut of her track “Vegas,” which is set to be featured in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic.
Transitioning to act three, Doja donned yet another costume change and took the crowd by surprise as she welcomed her “Tia Tamera” collaborator Rico Nasty to the stage to set the festival into flames with a metal-inspired rendition of the cult-favorite deep-cut.
As the singer who snagged the 2022 GRAMMY Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance cunningly moved through hits like “Ain’t S***” and “Kiss Me More,” the audience stayed laser-focused on the artist whose wild sense of humor often seems to be a trending topic across Twitter. The dichotomy between Doja’s previous “quitting” Twitter controversy and the high-caliber multi-faceted show she was delivering in the moment seemed to have rolled right off Doja’s back, making her confidence and precision that much more captivatingly haughty.
The powerhouse performer concluded her voyage at Coachella with an encore that included “Need to Know” and a preview of a new song called “F***ed Up.” During Doja Cat’s hour-long set the artist, gifted the crowd and the Twitter-verse with a set that would stop the naysayers right in their tracks, and more importantly live on in the heritage that comes with taking on the responsibility of performing as a Sunday night Coachella Mainstage act.
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