Did Doja Cat Just Reveal the Release Date for ‘Scarlet’?

All summer long, Doja Cat has been slowly building up to her fourth studio album Scarlet, whether it be with interviews, promotional singles, or her social media activity. So, it only makes sense that her latest update for her fans regarding the album came via a cryptic new Instagram post on Tuesday (August 22).

Uploading a photo showing a silhouette of her donning a pair of devil horns on her head, reminiscent of her recent “Paint the Town Red” music video, Doja Cat captioned her Tuesday post with the date “9.1.23” coupled with an hourglass emoji. However, without any further context, it’s unclear if September 1 signifies the arrival date for Scarlet, the arrival date for another pre-released single, or something entirely different.

If our first guess is correct, that would mean that Doja Cat would make her full-length return next Friday, as Scarlet would be her first album since the beloved June 2021 LP Planet Her, full of invigorating pop anthems like “Need to Know,” “Kiss Me More” with SZA, “Get Into It (Yuh),” “You Right” with The Weeknd and more. But this time around, Doja has made it crystal clear that she intends to include a more hip-hop-influenced sound on her album, honing in on her once-overlooked rapping ability.

“This new album is more introspective, but I’m not leaning so hard into that to where it becomes boring,” she told Harper’s Bazaar earlier this month. “So I want to give stories and bops. It’s a nice mixture of both… I think this project is a really fun canvas for me to play with my rap skills and talk about what’s going on in my life. But I’m not abandoning who I was and what I know about pop and singing and that aspect of music.”

[RELATED: Doja Cat’s “Paint The Town Red” Makes Spotify History]

This mentality has materialized in both of Doja’s singles for Scarlet, “Attention” from June and the aforementioned “Paint the Town Red” this month, which set a new record on Spotify charts. And, if next Friday will instead see the release of a third single instead of the full project, it’s likely that Doja will deliver another display of the fine-tuned rapping she’s employed on the album’s first two songs.

Photo by Jacob Webster / Courtesy RCA Records