Doja Cat

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini (Zulu: ['zandile 'ɮamini]; born October 21, 1995), known professionally as Doja Cat (/ˈdoʊdʒə/ *DOH-jə*), is an American rapper and singer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began making and releasing music on SoundCloud as a teenager. Her song "So High" caught the attention of Kemosabe and RCA Records, with which she signed a joint record deal before releasing her debut EP *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!", a novelty song in which she makes humorous claims about being a cow. Capitalizing on her growing popularity, she released her second studio album, *Hot Pink*, in the following year. It later reached the top 10 of the US *Billboard* 200 and spawned the single "Say So", of which the remix, featuring Nicki Minaj, topped the *Billboard* Hot 100. Her third studio album, *Planet Her* (2021), spent three consecutive weeks at number two on the *Billboard* 200 and spawned the top 10 singles "Kiss Me More" (featuring SZA), "Need to Know", and "Woman". Her upcoming fourth studio album, *Scarlet* (2023), will adopt a more hip hop-oriented sound, and has spawned the single "Paint the Town Red", which is among her biggest hits to date, having topped charts in the US and the UK among a dozen 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 music videos and songs that achieve popularity on social media websites such as TikTok. Well-versed in internet culture, she is also famed for her absurdist online personality and stage presence. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career, including one Grammy Award from sixteen nominations, five *Billboard* Music Awards, five American Music Awards, and four MTV Video Music Awards. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by *Time* in 2023.

### Early Life

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini was born on October 21, 1995, in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, into an artistic family. Her mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American graphic designer of Jewish heritage, and her father, Dumisani Dlamini, is a South African performer of Zulu descent, best known for starring as Crocodile in the original Broadway cast of the musical *Sarafina!* and the 1992 film adaptation. 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, in the hopes that they would join him there, yet Dlamini has on multiple occasions suggested that she is estranged from her father, claiming that she "never met him". Her father has denied these claims, claiming 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 the fear that they might lose her.

Soon after her birth, Dlamini moved from Tarzana to Rye, New York, where she lived for five years with her maternal grandmother, an architect and painter. At the age of eight, Dlamini moved with her mother and brother and returned to California to live at the Sai Anantam Ashram, a commune in Agoura Hills, and practiced Hinduism for four years. The swami and founder of the commune was American jazz musician Alice Coltrane (known by the Sanskrit name Turiyasangitananda). While living at the commune, Dlamini started wearing head-covering scarves and singing bhajans at temple, yet felt like she could not properly "be a kid" at the ashram. Her family then moved to Oak Park, where she started attending dance lessons and experienced a "sporty childhood", often skateboarding and visiting Malibu for surf camps. Dlamini and her brother also experienced harsh racism as they were some of the only mixed-race children in the area. She claims to have lacked interest in school from then on, instead taking a liking for dance. While at the ashram she had been dancing the style of Indian classical dance called Bharatanatyam. As she grew older and moved away from the ashram, she moved on to breakdancing classes and joined a professional poplocking troupe with whom she competed in dance battles throughout Los Angeles while still attending high school. Her aunt, a vocal coach, had given Dlamini singing lessons to help her audition for Central Los Angeles Area New High School #9, a performing arts high school in Los Angeles. She frequently skipped school to participate in online chatrooms. After becoming discouraged about her education and career path, Dlamini claims that she realized in eleventh grade that "performing and music was all [she] ever cared about." She eventually dropped out at age 16 while in her junior year. She also attributes this act to her struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), saying that "it felt like I was stuck in one spot and everybody else was progressing constantly".