Doja Cat VS Planet Her

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini is globally known as Doja Cat, known to be an American rapper, singer, and record producer. Dlamini was born in Los Angeles, living with both her parents. She then moved to New York with her grandmother, returning to LA to live in a commune, practicing Hinduism for four years. While living in the commune, Amala started wearing headscarves and singing at the temple. Moving again to a different part of LA, where she attended dancing lessons and took part in different sports such as surfing and skateboarding, distracting herself from school life but doing a lot of dancing, particularly Indian classical dancing called Bharatanatyam. Moving on to break dancing, attending dance battles, and spending a lot of time with her vocal coach aunt, helping her audition in performing arts schools. As she got to the eleventh grade she said that performing and music were all she cared about, dropping out of school at sixteen as she was struggling with her ADHD as she felt like she was getting left behind and everyone else was moving forward.

After dropping out of high school, she described her life as messy, sleeping on the floor and spending all day looking for beats on the internet, using these beats to create her music. She then was heavily interested in the internet with websites like Myspace, teaching herself how to sing and rap while at home, uploading the tracks she made onto SoundCloud.

In 2012, the teenager released the track “So High” as her first permanent upload on the streaming app. Then beginning her career in the underground hip-hop scene in Los Angeles, performing at parties, and being able to connect with rappers such as Busdriver. While doing so, she later met producer Tizhimself who happened to see her tracks on SoundCloud. She was then introduced by producer Yeti Beats who then invited her to a studio session and helped her sign to a label at seventeen. The artist then went by the name Doja Cat as she said that it was one of her cats as well as being her favourite strain of marijuana, being addicted to weed culture.

Two years later, Doja released her debut EP “Purrr!”. She described this EP as “spacey” and that it was Eastern-influenced. Her earlier SoundCloud single was re-recorded and released as her debut single for the EP. OG Maco then temporarily signed Doja, collaborating in 2016 with the song “Monster” from Maco’s mixtape “Children of The Rage”. Doja then stopped releasing music for a while after declining to be featured on Billie Eilish’s hit single “Bellyache”.

Her first release after the four-year hiatus was in 2018 with tracks “Roll with Us” and “Go to Town” as singles from her debut album “Amala”. “Candy”, one of the tracks, went crazy on social media platforms such as TikTok, helping it reach the charts, making it her first solo entry. Unfortunately, the album was ignored by critics and it failed to chart. In August of the same year, Doja self-published her music video for “Mooo!”, a track in which she fantasises about being a cow. The track became an internet meme, gaining three million views in one week, going on to be released on digital platforms in a deluxe form of “Amala”, followed by other singles “Tia Tamera”, and “Juicy”. This then made her record label pay more attention to her. Tyga then joined her for a remix version of “Juicy”, peaking at number forty-one in the Billboard charts, going on to be awarded platinum certification in the US.

Over a year later in 2019, we saw the release of “Bottom Bitch”, a single from her second album. “Hot Pink” was released in November of 2019, peaking at number nine on the Billboard 200. “Say So” was released alongside the album and gained a huge liking on TikTok, helping the track reach number five in the charts, being her first top ten single. “Say So” was also the most streamed song of 2020 by a female artist in the United States. The remix to the track then dropped a few months later, featuring Nicki Minaj, and reached number one on the Billboard charts. This became the first number one for both artists and the first ever female dup to peak the charts. Later that year she released her SoundCloud favourite “Freak” to all digital platforms and was also nominated for two awards at the BET Awards around the same time. Going on to win the ‘Push Best New Artist’ at the MTV Video Music Awards, alongside a performance for tracks “Say So” and “Like That” and appeared in a lot of tracks as a feature, for example, “Motive” featuring on Ariana Grande’s “Positions” album.

That same year she won several other awards, for example, ‘Best New Act’ at the MTV Europe Music Awards, and ‘New Artist of the Year’ as well as ‘Favourite Soul/R&B Female Artist at the 2020 American Music Awards. At the end of 2020, Doja was declared number five on both the new artist charts and female artists of that year, being ranked number one on Rolling Stone on their list of the ten biggest breakthrough artists of 2020. Doja was reported to be the fourth most Googled musician of 2020 in the United States.

Doja Cat had started 2021 strong as she appeared on Saweetie’s single “Best Friend”. In the next week, she was also seen with Megan Thee Stallion on Ariana Grande’s remix of “34+35”, which peaked at number two on the Billboard charts. Her own track “Streets” had crept up on TikTok as it created a viral challenge on the platform for the whole world to take part in, making them more aware of the American star. The Grammy Awards saw three awards for Doja Cat that year, ‘Best New Artist’, ‘Record of the Year’, and ‘Best Pop Solo Performance’.

In March 2021, Doja released the title of her third studio album “Planet Her” during an interview with V, an American fashion magazine. A month later, her lead single “Kiss Me More” featuring SZA was released. The track went on to spend nineteen consecutive weeks within the top ten, breaking the record for most weeks in a top ten by a female collaboration. After the release of “Need to Know”, the album tracklist was dropped with the album art over on Instagram. After the Album was released it went to number two on the Billboard charts, staying there for two weeks, being the first album to spend the first three weeks at number two in the charts since 2015. Later that year, Doja announced that she was going to be a Pepsi ambassador, being shown in the advert as she sang “You’re the One That I Want” as she celebrated the launch. At the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards, Doja hosted the ceremony and received awards for ‘Best Collaboration’ and ‘Best Art Direction’.

The rest of 2021 saw a lot of features from Doja, for example, “Icy Hot” with Young Thug and “Scoop” from Lil Nas X’s debut album “Montero”. As 2021 closed, Doja was the best-selling female R&B and hip-hop artist in the US and the fourth bestselling female overall, with her album “Planet Her” being the sixth bestselling album in the US. During the 64th Grammy Awards, she received eight nominations the most for any female.

Since dropping her album “Planet Her”, she has released a few more singles, for example, “Freaky Deaky” with Tyga. She has also announced that her upcoming album will be entirely rap as she claimed that pop music just isn’t exciting to her anymore and that she doesn’t want to make it.

Doja fans have an idea the album will be called “Hellmouth”, what are your first opinions on the title?