Empire Polo Club, Indio, California
Festival headliner delivered an A-game set, ignoring some of her mainstream hits yet bringing enough energy to power what some have called a middling year
Doja Cat took the Coachella mainstage as the last official act to perform on Sunday’s bill, becoming the first female rapper to headline the festival. (She’s also only the second Black woman to do so, after Beyoncé in 2018) Her closer rounded out a Sunday showcase of powerhouse female performers such as Renée Rapp and Kesha duetting the recession banger TiK ToK – changing the opening line to “wake up in the morning saying fuck P Diddy” – and Victoria Monet grinding through a slick and ultra-sexy set, at one point receiving artfully-simulated oral sex from a background dancer.
It would be diplomatic to say that Doja maintains a distant relationship with her fans, who call themselves kittenz, though their fave does not sanction this moniker. Doja’s told those who engage in parasocial relationships with the idea of her to “get off your phone and get a job” and “rethink everything” about their lives. Such boundary-setting has cost her some Instagram followers – around 300,000, to be exact, after going off on them in a social media tirade – but she could care less. “I feel free,” she wrote in an Instagram story after the snafu last year.
