The Evolution Of Doja Cat
Fame is a journey. Some enjoy the ride and others grab at any chance they can to escape the spotlight. Having an established fanbase makes it hard to have any breaks from the limelight. Through the highs and lows of a music career is it possible for a celebrity to end up hating their own fanbase?
Who is Doja Cat?
Doja Cat, originally born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini from Los Angeles, California first rose to internet fame through early TikTok virality. Her virality is why she is known, but it is not the beginning of her story.
Early in Doja’s life, she knew she needed to pursue music. After dropping out of a performing arts high school, she began working locally by helping with small shows. All while producing her own music and releasing it on SoundCloud. Music has always been her passion. Even before she was publically sharing her own music she helped coach other rising artists with their rapping.
From the get-go, she has always been rapping. However, in a dog-eat-dog world, you need to follow the mainstream to catch your footing in the music industry. Her very early releases on SoundCloud followed more R&B and stricter rap sounds than what she went viral for. The conflict between artistry and popularity is where trouble begins for Doja Cat and her image.
Doja’s Rise to Fame and Controversies
The trail to stardom has not always been all sunshine and rainbows of Doja. While her music and image look very carefully commercially curated from the outside, upon further investigation she has always fought with her label and fans.
Her debut album Amala came out in early 2018 with the help of RCA Records. The album didn’t do numbers, but it did well enough to keep her signed.
Shortly after the release of her debut album Doja found herself in hot water for several different reasons. Most notably, when she began to find more popularity her new fans began to dig up old Twitter receipts of her using homophobic language.
To worsen the situation, Doja apologized in her typical apathetic manner.
Doja Cat is known for her sarcasm and dry humor. Most of her apologies come across as unserious or inauthentic because of the angel she addresses them.
Her personality has always been unserious, which has greatly impacted her career. When people want to get into her music and see how she talks to her fans, it may deter them. She is vulgar, and sometimes mean, and does not hold back her feelings about the internet.
For a while after this Doja stayed out of the mainstream limelight. She remained lowkey and continued to interact with only diehard fans who would frequent Instagram lives and Twitch streams of her playing mostly Fortnite.
In late 2018, while she was messing with a beat someone gifted her, she began to collaborate with viewers of an Instagram live. By the time the Live was over they jointly wrote her first extremely viral song “Moo!”
Everything was looking up for Doja. She found nothing but success and eyes on her music with the virality of her joke song.
It took a little under two years for Doja to start the rollout of her sophomore album Hot Pink in late 2019. This album had a different sound than the singles she had been releasing and teasing on SoundCloud. There were more rap-centric songs like “Addiction“, but most of this album relied on a sung chorus with rap verses.
Her song structure is likely a result of producers she worked with on the album. Songs soon to be the source of her next controversy. She faced immense backlash from working with an infamous producer, Dr. Luke, on songs “Juicy,” “Say So,” and “Rules.” People were very upset about Doja working with Dr. Luke. It was especially hard to see artists give him work after his ongoing history of abusing artists. Most notably, his longstanding case of sexual assault on artist Ke$ha.
Doja has since denounced her time working with him. She states that she will never work with him again and saying:
“I think it was definitely nice of me to work with him.”
Doja also says that she does not know why he was credited on some of the songs. In my opinion, it was likely a decision by her record label.
Amid the pandemic, while everyone was stuck at home, it got out that there had been record of Doja on a website that notoriously hosted racist and bigoted behavior. She was caught on camera rolling around, making suggestive gestures to others over video chat. The regular clientele of the website are assumed to be white supremacists. (Based on the chatrooms’ typical audience.)
As the rapper is half-black herself, many of her fans had opinions on her choices. She had recently been a breakout successful black woman who many people looked up to or could relate to.
The hashtag #dojcatisoverparty started spreading when the information came out. More undiscovered questionable material also resurfaced including a song titled with a racial stereotype. Fans questioned her intentions when using the N-word and whether it was meant derogatorily or not.
She apologized for almost half an hour on Instagram Live in her usual sarcastic manner trying to defuse the situation.
Everything blew over in time, and then Doja released her 3rd studio album Planet Her in the summer of 2021. This was a very successful album from the get-go. She won her first Grammy for a collaboration with artist SZA on this album. The song “Kiss Me More” it hit #1 on the Billboard R&B and Rap chart.
Planet Her had been what the people were craving. Her live performances of this album were better than ever before.
Amidst a festival run, Doja faced an unexpected weather cancellation of the Asuncionico 2022 festival in Asunción, Paraguay. She was immediately attacked by upset fans online. The rapper apologized, but fans wouldn’t accept her apology via Twitter. She then revoked it and said “I’m not sorry,” which only ruffled more feathers.
Doja flew out of the country without any further communication with her fans who went to see her.
I understand Doja Cats’ frustration here as it was not her responsibility to cancel the festival due to unsafe weather conditions. Understandably fans were upset that the show was canceled. However, I don’t think that Doja should have been directly responsible for consoling her fans.
It all comes down to her fans having a little bit of an unhealthy reliance on the star to regulate their own emotions. Most of Doja Cat’s fans depend on her approval, and Doja is at this point becoming sick of the emphasis on the parasocial relationship the fans have with her.
Instead, Doja went on a now mostly deleted Twitter rant. She complained about her fans expecting too much from her and ended with an announcement: she was quitting music.
“I can’t wait to f*****g disappear and I don’t need you to believe in me anymore. Everything is dead to me, music is dead, and i’m a f*****g fool for ever thinking I was made for this this is a f*****g nightmare unfollow me”
She changed her name on Twitter to “i quit” and then later doubled down on her decision by changing her name to “i still quit.”
Unknowingly, the commercial success of her pop songs weighed heavy on Doja Cat. She later admitted that she became frustrated with having to constantly perform pop music that didn’t think represent her.
In combination with the seemingly unwarranted backlash from her fans about her lack of empathy for her fans, she spiraled a lot.
Doja Cat called her album Planet Her a “cash grab” that all of her fans had fallen for. When thanking people for streaming her album and selling out her shows she would insinuate that fans were losers because she was only making music for money.
She feels that her more pop-y songs take impressionable eyes away from the full potential of her artistry. She craves to be known as a rapper and her viral pop songs take away from her credibility.
Even after this happened, Doja would sporadically go on X, Instagram Live, and Twitch to rant about her frustration and share her other hobbies besides music to calm down from stressing about how to fix the hole she had dug for herself.
She remained in contact with her core fans but not in the mainstream media up until early 2023 when she went radio silent ahead of the release of her 4th studio album Scarlet.
Her first single from the album “Attention” is somewhat about the complicated relationship she has with her fans.
The comeback song features lyrics like:
“It don’t need your loving, it just needs attention. “
and
“I readed all the coments saying “D, I’m really shooketh”
“D, you need to see a therapist, is you looking?”
Yes, the one I got, they really are the best.”
She confirms that she hears all of the talk about herself and her career, but sometimes she just needs the attention on her.
It became clear where Doja Cat stood in her decisions. Although it took a lot of reiteration, Doja has always expressed that she wanted to release music for herself and not to make money. If fans liked her music, that is cool, but everything she does is not for her fans but done for herself.
As singles were released ahead of this album Doja also experienced a massive transformation of musical aesthetics and looks.
Her next single was “Paint The Town Red, ” which is also a song about marching to the beat of her own drum in the music industry.
The album that followed these two singles ended up being entirely rap. Doja Stayed true to her words and finally got to release the artistry that she believed best represented her.
She then released a follow-up album several months later including songs that were more “sing-y” or pop-esque that could not be placed with the Scarlet tracks.
Scarlet 2 CLAUDE came out in early 2024 and features one of the most recent Doja controversies. The album cover is an image of her natural hair.
Doja has been thrown back and forth as a pawn in discourse pertaining to how a black woman should appear to be taken as a professional. She has previously hypersexualized herself to sell albums. The “cash grab,” albums as she put it. Now people are upset that she is not trying to use her looks to sell her music. Stripping herself down to her true identity as a black woman by showing her natural hair on her album cover has been upsetting to some fans. The most recent controversy comes as a callback to her previous racial slur controversy, in addition to the preference for her more conventionally feminine appearance.
Doja has not interjected in the discourse but instead performed almost her entire scarlet tour with her “bald” natural hair.
She has effectively made it clear that she will do what she wants when she wants, and now a year after shaving her head, she has begun wearing wigs again on her own terms, and not to be a sexualized object.
Now that the water has calmed again, her X got hacked. The fans got used to her acting out at this point. Not a lot of people batt an eye to her wild accusations about other artists on X, a true testament to her finally weaving out the fans that care too much about her opinions and actions.
Where is She Now
The waves have started to settle for Doja recently. Fans who continue to support her tend to worship the ground she walks on and believe that she could do no wrong. Any internet controversy or conflict she faces due to her racy decisions are brushed off as “iconic” behavior. Something an enormously famous celebrity could get away with without facing any repercussions.
Doja Cat continues on her Scarlet tour across Europe, unbothered and happily wearing little to no clothes on stage despite what people may say. It appears that she has finally learned to not let the words of others affect her.
