Doja Cat

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, known professionally as Doja Cat, born October 21, 1995, in Los Angeles, California, to a South African actor father and an American Jewish painter mother, is one of the most eclectic, self-aware, and commercially dominant female rap-pop artists of her generation, a creative polymath who writes, produces, and performs with ferocious wit and stylistic fluidity that resists easy categorization. Raised in Tarzana, Los Angeles, she taught herself to sing and produce in her bedroom as a teenager, uploading tracks to SoundCloud at age sixteen. Her first viral breakthrough came with Mooo! (2018), a deliberately absurdist comedic track about being a cow widely shared across social media. Her debut album Amala (2018) was followed by Hot Pink (2019), whose breakout single Say So — remixed with Nicki Minaj — became her first number-one on the Billboard Hot 100. Planet Her (2021), a maximalist pop-rap album featuring Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, and SZA, debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and produced multiple number-one singles including Need to Know and Kiss Me More. She won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance for Say So (Remix) and Best Melodic Rap Performance for Kiss Me More (2022). Scarlet (2023) marked a return to rawer, more confrontational rap and received widespread critical acclaim as a bold artistic statement. Her constantly shifting hair colors, transgressive fashion choices, and sardonic online presence make her one of the most talked-about artists in contemporary pop culture, a performer who uses social media as a creative tool rather than a promotional obligation.