The cow isn’t coming home. It’s been seven long years since Doja Cat sauntered across these lush pop pastures with “Mooo!,” a breakout single in which the young singer-rapper fearlessly declared, “B----, I’m a cow. B----, I’m a cow. I’m not a cat, I don’t say meow.”

In this dizzying act of canine-bovine-feline disentanglement, Doja Cat appeared to be inventing a new flavor of weird — an absurdism that felt funny, sweet, sexy, nervous and nihilistic. Then things got bummer-weird. Her hybridized vocalizations became silkier, narrower, less surprising, until she was making the kind of music that earns Grammy nominations for album of the year and interviews with Jimmy Fallon. The more personality she drained from her songs, the more popular they became. Advertisement Advertisement

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