- Doja Cat has been an experimental artist to watch for a few years now, but with her Billboard top 20 charting hit "Say So," she's finally reached the mainstream.
- A lot of her success is due to a viral hit on YouTube, "Moo!," which is a novelty song about being a cow – she's also evolved as a more serious artist with the albums "Amala" and "Hot Pink."
- Doja Cat's rise has also largely been propped up by TikTok, where one of the most popular, pervasive dances of all time is set to "Say So" – and the choreographer even made a cameo in the music video.
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Even if you're not a TikTok user, you've probably heard the catchy, R&B-influenced track "Say So." Not unlike "Old Town Road," the hit Doja Cat song got its fame after it went insanely viral on the short-form video app.
It makes sense that the artist's career would get a mainstream boost from a TikTok dance. Everything about Doja Cat is primed for the internet, from her e-girl aesthetics to the viral YouTube video "Mooo!" that propelled her from a small LA-based artist into the mainstream.
Here's how Doja Cat harnessed viral moments and genre-bending artistry to become one of the most popular people in music right now.
The woman behind Doja Cat is 24-year-old Amalaratna "Amala" Zandile Dlamini, and she was born and raised in LA.
Her father, Dumisani Dlamini, is a South African actor and producer, while her mother Deborah Elizabeth Sawyer is a Jewish-American painter.
She picked the stage name Doja Cat because of her affinity for marijuana and "weed culture," as well as her love for cats.
When she made her album "Amala," Doja Cat told the Los Angeles Times that she was "super high all the time," but in recent years she says not smoking has improved her songwriting.
Doja Cat started releasing SoundCloud tracks when she was a teenager, like her song "So High," which was featured on the TV series "Empire."
When Doja Cat released the music video for "So High" a year later, Vibe described her as an "18-year-old psychedelic prodigy."
She signed with RCA Records and Kemosabe Records in 2014, and released her first EP, called "Purrr!"
Doja Cat's genre-bending style incorporates elements of R&B, hip hop, pop, rap, and psychedelic music. She has cited influences ranging from Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera to Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, and Drake.
Doja Cat first shot to viral superstardom with a track she made in one day, with the intention of it becoming a meme, called "Mooo!"
While wearing a sexy cow-print costume, she danced in front of absurdist graphics, stuck McDonald's french fries up her nose, and sang lyrics like "B—-, I'm a cow."
"Mooo!" became a viral YouTube hit, has more than 67 million views, and helped promote her first studio album, "Amala."
Popular artists like Chance the Rapper, Katy Perry, and Chris Brown acknowledged and praised "Mooo!," and Doja Cat later released it as a standalone single. Throughout her career, Doja Cat has used livestreaming tools like Instagram Live to connect with her fanbase, and many of the "Mooo!" lyrics stemmed from a creative session on Live.
"Mooo!" propelled Doja Cat into the spotlight, but she also had to deal with a controversy soon after when old, homophobic remarks surfaced.
Old tweets showed her using gay slurs to describe artists like Tyler the Creator. Doja Cat eventually apologized, but she first tried to defend herself with a tweet saying "I've said f—– roughly like 15 thousand times in my life […] I don't think I hate gay people. Gay is okay" – which resulted in even more backlash.
The year after "Mooo!" debuted, Doja Cat released "Tia Tamera" featuring another artist on the rise, Rico Nasty.
"Tia Tamera" was the lead single to the deluxe edition of "Amala," and the growing success of both artists at around the same time makes it a standout Doja Cat track.
She also released her first song to chart in the Billboard 200, "Juicy," featuring Tyga.
"Juicy" debuted at 83 and peaked at 41, making it Doja Cat's most successful song at that point.
She also had a major bop with her track "Boss B*tch," which was part of the "Birds of Prey" soundtrack.
"Boss B*tch" is Doja Cat's latest single, and it plays in a pivotal scene in the Harley Quinn movie.
But Doja Cat's most successful song is "Say So," and its viral popularity started with a dance on the app TikTok.
"@yodelinghaley" came up with a simple dance to the chorus of "Say So" that blasted into the TikTok hall of fame, becoming one of the most popular dances on the app ever. The relatively simple movements compared to dances like the "Renegade" have contributed to its popularity.
HERE IT IS!! the full say so dance🥺🥰
Almost every major TikToker has done the "Say So" dance, and the song itself blew up as a result.
Doja Cat has seen success on TikTok with other tracks, too. Her song "Candy" was released in 2016, on her "Purrr!" EP, but it gained enough TikTok fame in 2019 that it charted at number 86 on the Billboard 200 in December.
"Say So" is Doja Cat's most popular track to date, and it broke the top 20 to peak at number 16 so far.
"Say So" was produced by Dr. Luke, which makes the track's popularity somewhat controversial, since the producer has been accused of sexual assault and abuse by the singer Kesha. He used a pseudonym, "Tyson Trax," for "Say So," and it's his first top 20 hit in half a decade.
Doja Cat recognized just why "Say So" became so popular in the first place, and she performs the TikTok choreography in the official music video.
Haley Sharpe, the TikToker behind the viral dance, also makes a cameo in the "Say So" video.
guys! guess where you’ll be seeing me tomorrow! tune in to @dojacat’s youtube channel at 10am ET tomorrow to watch the premiere of say so! 🥰
The success of "Say So" was meant to continue over into the Hot Pink tour, for Doja Cat's latest album, but the tour was postponed due to the coronavirus.
Doja Cat is also set to perform at Coachella, which was also postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Coachella is still happening, but it won't take place until October.
Outside of music, Doja Cat is also known for her unique, e-girl inspired fashion.
With more than 4.1 million Instagram followers, she also has a presence as an influencer. The streaming platform Caffeine has an exclusive contract with Doja Cat, and she livestreams herself playing "The Sims" video game franchise.
Her provocative, bubblegum aesthetic hasn't pigeonholed her, and Doja Cat's fanbase has only continued to grow with experimental tracks like "Bottom B—-," which samples Blink-182.
The song, in which Doja Cat talks about a female partner and compares herself to a pimp, samples "What's My Age Again?"
"I can sample Blink-182 but put an African vocal sample in there," she told the LA Times. "The whole song feels like you're in a tropical forest."
As her star continues to rise, Doja Cat wants to be taken seriously – and is – but she's still promoting goofy tracks and fun aesthetics.
"That's a small portion of my career, taking a moment to do something stupid," she told the LA Times. "I have a song called 'Waffles Are Better Than Pancakes.' If I can't be goofy, I'll go insane. I can talk about waffles and how much I hate spiders all day, but I can't sit and write about heartfelt [stuff] unless I have the emotional space to do it."
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