Music / Doja Cat

Influences:

• Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Missy Elliott, Prince, D'Angelo, Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, TLC, Tupac Shakur, Earth, Wind & Fire, DMX, India.Arie, Jamiroquai, Katy Perry

You can reciprocate
I got delicious taste, you need a woman's touch in your place
Just protect her and keep her safe
Baby, worship my hips and waist
So feminine with grace
I touch your soul when you hear me say, "Boy"
Let me be your woman

—"Woman"

Amalaratna Zandile Dlamini (born October 21, 1995), better known by her stage name Doja Cat, is an American singer, rapper, songwriter and record producer from Los Angeles.

Doja Cat began her music career in 2012, with her debut single "So High" catching the attention of two record labels that she signed a joint deal with. She released her debut EP Purrr! in 2014 through this deal, after which she embarked on a four-year hiatus due to what she described as a "creative limbo", influenced by drug use and neglect from her labels.

Her hiatus ended with the release of several singles from her debut album Amala; upon its release in March 2018, the album was largely ignored by critics and failed commercially, and Doja Cat herself would publicly state that she was unhappy with the album. However, around five months later, her self-released single "Mooo!", a joke song about being a cow, brought her to online fame, with its music video quickly going viral and reaching meme status. Her career has continued from there with further successful releases solidifying her mainstream popularity, spawning hits such as "Say So" (which topped the Billboard Hot 100 with help from a remix featuring Nicki Minaj), "Kiss Me More" (featuring SZA), "Need to Know" and "Woman". She has been praised for her singing and rapping skills as well as the high virality of her songs and music videos, aided by her knowledge of internet culture and her absurdist public persona.

Music-wise, Doja Cat mainly dances in between Pop, Contemporary R&B, and Hip-Hop, sometimes even in the same song. However, she has also tapped into other genres, such as disco with the aforementioned "Say So" and even rock, as she did a rock cover of "Say So" for the MTV Europe Music Awards.

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Discography:

Extended Plays

• Purrr! (2014)

Studio Albums

• Amala (2018)
• Hot Pink (2019)
• Planet Her (2021)
• Scarlet (2023)

Standalone singles

• "Boss Bitch" (2020, part of the Birds of Prey soundtrack)

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Bitch, I'm a trope. Bitch I'm a trope:

• Ascended Meme: The "Say So" music video features choreography from a viral TikTok dance video set to the song that had boosted the song's popularity. The dance's originator, Haley Sharpe, also appears in the video.
• Auto-Tune: Used heavily in "Bottom Bitch", particularly towards the end. Also shows up on her featured verse on Tove Lo's song Equally Lost".
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Usually averted as she raps and sings in a majority of her songs on her own. However, she has done this for singers such as Bebe Rexha on her song "Baby I'm Jealous" and Ariana Grande on her song "Motive".
• Black Eyes of Evil: Doja and her male demon lover have these in the "Paint The Town Red" video.
• Boastful Rap: "Demons"
  I'm the fastest-growing bitch on all your apps now
  You are tired of me 'cause I'm on your ass now
  You are mad at me 'cause I am all they slap now
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: The single art◊ for "Juicy".
• Card-Carrying Villain: Invoked by her in "Paint The Town Red", as a response to her haters.
  Bitch, I said what I said!
  I'd rather be famous instead!
  I let all that get to my head!
  I don't care, I paint the town red!
  
  Mmm, she the devil
  She a bad lil' bitch, she a rebel
  She put her foot into the pedal
  It'll take a whole lot for me to settle
• Chroma Key:
  • The "Mooo!" music video features extremely obvious chroma key, with visible green edges around Doja Cat's hair and clothes in most shots.
  • The "Like That" music video uses (more professionally-done) chroma key in certain shots to make it look like parts of Doja's body are missing.
• Darker and Edgier: Scarlet, which features a harder musical style and occult-themed horror music videos.
• Double Entendre: From "Demons":
  I just swallowed all his kids and spit the class out
• Gasshole: In "Mooo!" she raps "Got the methane, I'm a farter".
• Genre Roulette: Doja Cat is classified as a R&B/Soul artist by her label, but her versatility as an artist has her dipping many genres. This has led to some controversy online when she won “Best Soul/R&B Artist” at the American Music Awards in 2020, as many felt she was wrongly placed in that category. To be fair, her first album Amala leaned more towards R&B.
• Genre Shift: In 2023, Doja Cat raged against her earlier pop tracks and released Scarlet, a Hip-Hop album with a little bit of R&B thrown in with no Pop leanings.
• Hidden Depths: Is a pundit on privacy issues and consumer issues.
• Homage: The "Demons" video heavily references The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and stars horror icon Christina Ricci.
• Hurricane of Puns: The first verse of "Mooo!" is full of cow- and dairy-based puns.
  Got milk, bitch? Got beef?
  Got steak, ho? Got cheese?
  Grade A ho, not lean
  Got me A1, sauce please
  These heifers got nothin' on me
  Steaks high, need a side of collard greens
  Cash rules everything around me
  Ice C.R.E.A.M, ice C.R.E.A.M
• Intercourse with You: Quite a lot of her songs are about this.
• Medium Blending:
  • In the music video for "Mooo!", where the chroma key background switches between animations, sprite art and real-life footage.
  • The "Like That" video has multiple animated sections showing an anime-esque rendition of Doja Cat, and the live-action sections feature various cartoon-like animated effects.
• Ms. Fanservice: She’s not afraid of showing off her body, especially her butt.
• Pink Is Erotic: As part of her sex appeal, Doja Cat is associated with the color pink when she appears scantily clad. As shown by the album Hot Pink and the "grass outfit" shown in the page image where she wields pink hedge clippers, wears pink gloves and she has dyed her hair pink. Doja Cat is also seen as an icon for sex positivity and body confidence.
  "Pussy all pink with a tan
  And I play with it ’til my middle fingers are cramped up.”
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the "Demons" video, Doja and the other demons have creepy red eyes.
• Retraux: In keeping with its 70s-influenced aesthetic, the "Say So" music video appears to be shot on film giving it an old, grainy look.
• Sampling:
  • "Bottom Bitch" samples "What's My Age Again" by blink-182.
  • "Kiss Me More" interpolates "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John.
  • "Freak" samples "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" by Paul Anka.
  • "Fancy" samples Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D".
• Sexy Packaging: Amala and Hot Pink both show Doja Cat in very revealing outfits, while on the single art for "Juicy" she is completely nude.
• Shaking the Rump: Several of her music videos, such as "Juicy", "Mooo!", and "Like That" feature repeated shots of ass-shaking by Doja Cat / her backup dancers.
• Shout-Out:
  • "Tia Tamera" is one to Tia and Tamera Mowry of Sister, Sister fame, while the animated sequences in the music video for "Like That" are heavily inspired by Sailor Moon.
  • “Streets” references Final Fantasy during the rap verse.
• Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "Juicy" is about this.
• Three Minutes of Writhing:
  • "Like That"'s music video is half this half Animated Music Video; every shot of Doja is her dancing in skimpy clothes.
  • "Say So" is four minutes of Doja dancing in skimpy clothing. The narrative of the video is that she's trying to seduce a repairman in her home so that's justified, though much of the video is non-diegetic and just there to showcase the singer's dancing and body.
• Updated Re Release:
  • Following the success of "Mooo!" and "Tia Tamera", a deluxe version of Amala was released featuring those songs.
  • A deluxe version of Planet Her was also released two days after the regular version, adding five new songs including collaberations with rappers Eve and Gunna, while also adding Doja's originally removed rap verse from the track "You Right".

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