Doja Cat likes to play around. And during her visit to The Tonight Show on Wednesday night (May 1), the “Paint the Town Red” singer/rapper was in an especially playful mood while discussing the wild outfits her dancers wear on the tour in support of her Scarlet album. Previewing the hair-forward upcoming European leg of her Scarlet tour, Doja told host Jimmy Fallon, “I wanted it to be modeled after hair, that’s the theme, hair, so it’s going to be a very hairy show.”
Fallon noted that last month Doja became the first female rapper to headline Coachella, cueing up a clip of a performance of “Demons” from that gig during which her dancers bopped around stage in gigantic, white-fur-covered yeti-like costumes. That naturally led to Doja offering Fallon a chance to get in on the action by modeling one of the hair suits, which he awkwardly pulled on, unable to properly cinch up the furry pants.
What followed was a hirsute Fallon bopping and bouncing along to the Roots’ funky beat as he learned some of Doja stage choreo, waving his arms and grabbing the air while holding up the pants with one hand.
The interview also touched on Doja’s early performance “dance battles” as a kid and the dance crew she was in as a teenager, as well as her memory of her first-ever concert: Earth, Wind & Fire. While checking out her mom’s favorite band, the then five-year-old Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini was unexpectedly given her first spotlight. “It sounds like a lie, but I was pulled up on stage because we were in the front and, like a tiny little peanut like this going ‘ahhhh!!!’… I get it,” she laughed.
Her second show as just as epic, also with her mom: Beyoncé. That time, though, mother and daughter were as far as possible from the stage in the rafters, with only Bey’s whipping hair visible from that nosebleed vantage. “Saw a tiny little Beyoncé, but it was great,” she said.
Doja returned later in the show for an intense performance of the slow-burn Scarlet deluxe edition track “Acknowledge Me,” joined by an angelic six-member choir and full band on a smoke-shrouded stage during which she, of course, wore a white hair coat over white bodysuit.
Watch Fallon’s hairy dance and the “Acknowledge Me” performance below.
