Doja Cat is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. She was born on October 21, 1995, and her birthplace is Los Angeles, California, United States. Her height is about 5′ 6”. Doja is nominated three times at Grammy Awards and six Billboard Music Awards and has won two American Music Awards in addition to the MTV Video Music Award for Push Best New Artist and its European counterpart. Forbes named Doja Cat “One of the top breakout stars of 2020” and listed her on their annual 30 under 30 lists.
Biography
Early life
Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini was born in Los Angeles, California in the neighborhood of Tarzana, her mother Deborah Elizabeth Sawyer is a Jewish-American painter and her father Dumisani Dlamini is a South African actor, composer, and film producer.
Soon after her birth, Dlamini and her mother moved to New York City, where they lived for five years, and later moved back to California in Oak Park, where her aunt, a singer, gave Dlamini singing lessons and enrolled her in ballet, tap and jazz lessons.
Her family then moved near the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles when she was 11 years old, where they lived in an ashram in the mountains of Agoura Hills and practiced Hinduism for four years.
She lacked interest in school, instead started liking dance, while at the ashram she had been dancing the style of Indian classical dance called Bharatanatyam but as she grew older she moved onto breakdancing classes and joined a professional pop-locking troupe while still attending high school.
She also frequently skipped school to participate in online chatrooms and eventually dropped out of high school at age 16 while in her junior year.
Music Career
After dropping from school, she began making music and releasing it on SoundCloud as a teenager but her song ”So High” caught the attention of Kemosabe and RCA Records, with which she signed a joint record deal at the age of 17.
In August 2014, Doja Cat released her debut EP, Purrr! described as spacey, eastern-influenced R&B, later signed to OG Maco’s label and collaborated on the song “Monster” from Maco’s 2017 mixtape, Children of The Rage.
She got her stage name from one of her cats as well as her favorite strain of marijuana, stating, “I was heavily addicted to weed and weed culture, so when I began rapping I thought of the word dojo and how it sounds like a girl’s name.
In February 2018, Doja Cat released the promotional single ”Roll with Us”, ”Go to Town” and a few months later “Candy”, become the single charted in countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, with the song peak at 86 on the Billboard Hot 100, making this her first solo entry on the chart.
On March 30, 2018, her debut studio album ”Amala” was released, including the three singles, and later earned viral success as an internet meme with the single “Mooo!”
She later claimed to have been under the influence of marijuana for most of the production of the album and the album was largely ignored by critics and failed to chart in any market and landed at number 138 on the Billboard 200 in late 2019.
Doja Cat’s second studio album, Hot Pink (2019) reached the top 10 of the US Billboard 200.
In 2020, Doja Cat collaborated with Ariana Grande on their song ”Motive”, and later featured on the remix of Grande’s “34+35” alongside Megan Thee Stallion, which became her second song to reach the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.
Her third song to reach this feat, “Kiss Me More” featuring SZA, served as the lead single from her third studio album, Planet Her, which is scheduled to be released on June 25, 2021.
In January 2020, “Say So” was sent to radio to become the fourth single off of her album Hot Pink and performed the song on ”The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in February 2020.
The next day, she released the music video for the song, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, and peaked at number five on the Hot 100 and was the most-streamed song of 2020 by a female artist in the United States.
In May 2020, following the release of a remix of “Say So” featuring Nicki Minaj the single topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first number-one single for both artists.
In March 2020, Doja Cat was set to embark on the Hot Pink Tour in support of a new album, before it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
