Artist:Doja Cat
Song:Paint the Town Red
Album:Scarlet
The 2023 single Paint the Town Red is one of two number one hits for rapper Amala "Doja Cat" Diamini. Her other number one hit was a collab with Nicki Minaj so this is her first big solo hit. The video portrays her as a she devil. I guess she thinks that's good for record sales. She was born Oct. 21, 1995 in Los Angeles. Her father is South African musician Dumisani Diamini. He played Crocodile in the Broadway and film musical Serafina!. He had a brief relationship with graphic designer Deborah Sawyer while appearing on Broadway. He moved back to South Africa. Amala claims she has no relationship with her father which he denies. Amala was sent to Rye, NY to live with her grandmother at age two and returned to Los Angeles to live with her mother and brother in a Hindu commune. They moved to Oak Park and Amala took dance lessons. She took singing lessons from her vocal coach aunt. This got her into a performing arts high school. But Amala struggled with ADHD and she cut classes. So she quit school at age 16 because she didn't think she was getting anywhere. She taught herself to rap using GarageBand and started posting to SoundCloud in 2012. She started performing at parties with other rappers. The name Doja Cat is weed related and Amala now regrets taking it. Producer Jerry "Tizhimself" Powell met Amala through SoundCloud and he sent her to David "Yeti Beats" Sprecher and he invited her to record at his studio in Echo Park. And that led her to a record deal with Dr. Luke's label Kemosabe with RCA distribution. An EP was released in 2014 and the single So High appeared on the FOX series Empire. Amala recorded with producer Benedict "OG Maco" Ihesiba in 2015. Then she experienced writer's block which forced her to turn down projects. She says she was smoking too much weed. Her 2018 debut CD Amala did not do well. She says now that she partied too much and smoked too much weed while recording. Her music video for the novelty song Mooo! became a meme and RCA added it to the deluxe edition of Amala. But it didn't chart. But it did show her potential to RCA. So they spent a lot more money promoting the 2019 album Hot Pink and the single Say So featuring Nicki Minaj topped the Billboard Hot 100. The album was certified 2XPlatinum. The success meant Amala appeared on TV and toured. She was nominated for BET and MTV awards. Her second number one hit Paint the Town Red is from the 2023 album Scarlet. The problem is the album hasn't sold as well as previous albums. The original title of the album was Hellmouth and she adopted a darker tone on this album. She denounced previous albums as pop fluff. Some have viewed these changes as demonic and that's why the album hasn't sold. You can see what she is going for in the video. On her early albums, she still worked a lot with Sprecher. But she's not working with him anymore. Paint the Town Red was written and produced by Isaac Earl "Earl on the Beat" Bynumn and his frequent partner Jean-Baptiste Kouame. Bynumn is from Atlanta and has worked mainly with Atlanta rappers. He produced three songs on the album. Of course the main sample is Dionne Warwick's 1964 recording of the Burt Bacharach Hal David song Walk on By. It's too easily recognizable for me. It remains to be seen if Amala will keep this darker tone. And if she does, how will that affect her career. I'm pretty sure RCA will try to convince her to abandon that. My guess is she won't because she denounced the tone of those early albums. Here's the video for Paint the Town Red by Doja Cat.
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