Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, professionally known as Doja Cat, is an American rapper and singer. She was born on October 21, 1995, and raised in Los Angeles. As a teenager, Doja Cat began making and releasing music on SoundCloud. Her song “So High” caught the attention of Kemosabe and RCA Records, with whom she signed a recording contract prior to the release of her debut extended play, Purrr! in 2014.
After a hiatus from releasing music and the uneventful rollout of her debut studio album, Amala (2018), Doja Cat earned viral success as an internet meme with her 2018 single “Mooo!”. Capitalizing on her growing popularity, she released her second studio album, Hot Pink, in the following year. The album later reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200 and spawned the single “Say So”. The remix of this song featuring Nicki Minaj topped the Billboard Hot 100.
Doja Cat’s third studio album, Planet Her (2021), spent four weeks at number two on the Billboard 200 and spawned the top ten singles “Kiss Me More” (featuring SZA), “Need to Know”, and “Woman”. Her fourth studio album, Scarlet (2023), adopted a hip hop-oriented sound and peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200. Its lead single “Paint the Town Red” became her most successful song to date, as it marked her first solo number-one on the Hot 100 among eight other countries.
Described by The Wall Street Journal as “a skilled technical rapper with a strong melodic sense and a bold visual presence”, Doja Cat is known for creating videos and performances that achieve virality on social media platforms such as TikTok. She is also well-versed in Internet culture and is famed for her absurdist online personality and stage presence. Throughout her career, she has received numerous accolades, including one Grammy Award from sixteen nominations, five Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, and five MTV Video Music Awards. She is one of the biggest commercial artists of the 2020s according to Billboard and was included on the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2023.
Doja Cat’s mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American graphic designer of Jewish heritage. Her father, Dumisani Dlamini, is a South African performer of Zulu descent. The two had a brief relationship after meeting in New York City where Dumisani performed on Broadway, but he was too busy on tour to spend time with Amala and her brother. He claims to have left his family in the US for South Africa out of homesickness, hoping they would join him there. However, Doja Cat has suggested on multiple occasions that she is estranged from her father, stating that she “never met him”. Her father has denied these claims, stating that he has a “healthy” relationship with his daughter and that her management team had tried to block all his attempts to contact her out of fear that they “might lose her”.
