Doja Cat

Submission 11,186

Featured Episode

About

Doja Cat is the stage name of Amalaratna Zandile Dlamini, an American singer and rapper who went viral in 2018 for her self-released music video for her song "Mooo!" after over six years uploading her own music to Soundcloud. Several of Doja Cat's songs have acquired significant popularity on TikTok in 2019 and 2020. On Twitter, Doja Cat has faced scrutiny since 2018 for her past homophobic tweets, music subject matter and chat room involvement.

Online History

In 2012, according to an interview with Fader,^[1] Doja Cat uploaded her first big single "So High" to Soundcloud which caught the attention of RCA records who she signed with in 2014. The track was reposted to Soundcloud in February 2017 and has since gained over 109,000 likes in three years (shown below).

DOJA CAT · SO HIGH

On August 10, 2018, Doja Cat uploaded the completely self-produced music video "Mooo!" (shown below, left). The video gained over75 milllion views and 1.7 million likes in two years. Her breakthrough album Hot Pink was released on November 7, 2019 and featured the popular single "Say So" that went viral on TikTok that year. On February 27th, Doja Cat uploaded the official music video for "Say So" which garnered over 153.5 million views in four months (shown below, right).

Reputation

Doja Cat has a reputation online of being problematic due to old homophobic tweets and controversial music subject matter. Vulture^[2] published an article outlining her controversial reputation throughout her career. Early on, in August 2018, Doja Cat was "under fire after ‘homophobic’ tweets resurfaced" according to a @popcrave^[3] tweet (shown below, left). In May 2020 many Twitter users recognized Doja for being problematic since her career's start. On May 22nd, Twitter user @spidysiron^[4] tweeted, "I remember Doja Cat sexualizing and appropriating Hindu culture for a music video and also being racist towards Asians in a song so sis has been problematic since day 1" (shown below, right). As of June 2020, Doja Cat has 6.7 million followers on Instagram,^[5] 4.3 million followers on TikTok^[6] and 1.7 million followers on Twitter.^[7] Many of her fans congregate in the subreddits r/DojaCat^[8] and r/DojaCatFans.^[9]

TinyChat Controversy

Doja Cat's TinyChat Controversy refers to a leaked video of singer Doja Cat in an alleged white-supremacist TinyChat chatroom called "Tea Time," which circulated Twitter in May 2020. The video of Doja Cat caused #DojaIsOverParty to trend on Twitter which in turn allowed users to unearth past controversial posts, what she has allegedly done on TinyChat and her song named after the Dindu Nuffin meme. Doja Cat swiftly apologized on Twitter but denied being apart of a racist chatroom.

Sam Hyde Shirt Controversy

On October 6th, 2023, Doja Cat posted a series of now-deleted selfies to Instagram, including a post to her Story, wearing a shirt that features controversial comedian Sam Hyde holding a gun that is often used in "Sam Hyde is the shooter" memes, garnering an unknown number of likes before it was deleted (shown below).

After deleting the post that day, purportedly due to backlash for supporting Hyde, Doja Cat removed the post and re-uploaded a cropped version of it to Instagram with the caption "🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄" (shown below, left).^[16] The Sam Hyde shirt gained viral spread that day, largely through posts criticizing her for support Hyde, who many consider to be a neo-Nazi. For example, on that day, X^[17] user @rapalert6 posted the photo, writing, "Doja Cat poses for a selfie wearing a shirt with neo Nazi Sam Hyde on it," garnering over 13,300 likes in three days. That day, X^[18] user @MFGROOT quote-shared the post, writing, "hey doja cat fans, welcome to the kanye west fan experience," garnering over 163,000 likes in three days (shown below).

Later that day, X^[19] user @ONSOMEPACSHIT posted criticism of Doja Cat, writing, "imagine being a pick me for incels… like doja cat is really trying her best to be cancelled and un-famous again just so she can get back to those racial chat rooms full time," garnering over 163,000 likes in three days. No Jumper host Adam22 defended Doja in a post to X,^[20] writing, "So sad she’s got an offensive/great sense of humor and is forced to hide it from the world," garnering around 1,700 likes in three days (shown below). Hyde posted a link to his merch on X^[23] that day, including the shooter t-shirt Doja wore, writing, "Extremely Fucking Hyper CHiked The Fuck Up RIght now. Fuck it," garnering over 3,000 likes in three days.

On October 7th, Insider^[21] and Rolling Stone^[22] reported on the story.

Doja Cat's "Mooo!"

On August 10th, 2018, Doja Cat released the video for her single Mooo! on YouTube. The video features the rapper performing the song in front of various images while wearing a cow-print outfit. The video received more than 400,000 views in four days. Online, people and fans of Doja Cat responded positively to the song and the video. Many, for example, posted the lyrics "bitch, I'm a cow" using ASCII, image macros and emojis (examples below).

Say So

On November 6th, 2019, Doja Cat released the song "Say So." On December 11th, 2019, TikToker @yodelinghaley released a short and simple dance for the song first through a chain (shown below, left) and then in one single video (shown below, right). The video gained over 175,700 likes and 630,400 likes respectively in a month.

On December 20th, James Charles uploaded a TikTok in which he performs the dance (shown below, left). The video garnered over 2.5 million likes in several weeks. On December 22nd, Charli D'Amelio gained over 3.9 million likes in several weeks for uploading a TikTok dance video (shown below, right).

Cyber Sex

On November 7th, 2019, Doja Cat released her official music video for her song "Cyber Sex" which includes datamoshing (shown below). The video accumulated over 19.3 million views and 259,000 likes in seven months.

In May 2020, the song was used in TikTok remixes of "I Like the View":
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-the-view which is a memorable quote uttered by Rose on the reality television series 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days. In the episode, Rose says the line to her fiancé Big Ed Brown, who responds, "You're my best view." On May 9th, TikToker @tyler_warwick uploaded a version of the conversation, remixing the audio with the Doja Cat song "Cyber Sex." the post received more than 44,000 views and 700 comments in less than two months (shown below). The sound clip has since accumulated more than 3.2 million views.^[15]

Imma Bitch Imma Boss

Imma Bitch Imma Boss refers to a series of TikTok videos in which TikTokers compare themselves to glam bot shots of celebrities at the Grammy's or glamorous slow-motion shots of others. The videos which became popular in March 2020, are set to the song "Boss Bitch" by Doja Cat. On February 9th, 2020, TikToker @rustam..mayer posted the first grammy "imma bitch imma boss" edit comparing himself to girls at school first thing in the morning us using Doja Cat's "Boss Bitch"^[1] (shown below). The video gained over two million likes in a month. In the following month, TikTokers created their own variations on the mem (shown below, right).

Say So Remix

On April 30th, 2020, Doja Cat uploaded the 'Say So' remix featuring Nicki Minaj to YouTube which garnered over 400,000 views and 77,000 likes in a day (shown below). The collaboration created excitement on Twitter after it's release. TikTokers and Twitter users alike raised concern over the Minaj lyrics "used to be bi but now I’m just hetero.”

On May 6th, 2020, Doja Cat tweeted,^[10] "If say so hits #1 I’ll show you guys my boobs really hard," gaining over 53,000 retweets and 413,000 likes (shown below). She continued baiting fans with similar promises on Twitter over the following days.^[11]^[12]

Doja Cat's "Freak"

Doja Cat's 'Freak' is a self-released 2018 song that became popular in May 2020 due to TikTok dance and POV videos. The song has been used in over 630,900 videos on TikTok within three months of it being uploaded to the platform and inspired a TikTok dance which was performed by Charli D'Amelio (examples shown below).

Paris Fashion Week Dress

Doja Cat Paris Fashion Week Dress refers to an outfit worn by Doja Cat during a Paris Fashion Week event on January 23rd, 2023. The outfit, which covered her entire body in blood-red crystals and gave the singer a strikingly reptilian appearance, inspired memes and commentary across the web.

Personal Life

On October 21st, 1995, Amalaratna Zandile Dlamini, Doja Cat's given name, was born in Tarzana, Los Angeles.^[13] She has a supportive upbringing by artistic parents. She has frequented chat rooms since she was a child.^[14]