12 - The rise (and fall) of Doja Cat - Cartèlea Howell
All opinions are my own.
Doja Cat is on fire right now. She is everywhere in the media, socials, a hot topic. What’s the deal with her? The deal is not only is she talented, she is controversial.
Doja Cat’s music could be described as pop music with hints of r&b and a splash of sass. Her top hits include, Moo, Say So, Candy and Juicy.
She’s been around since around 2013 but rose to prominence properly when “Mooo!” went viral on Youtube in 2018. The rest is history, so to say. As a teenager, she started out like many artists of her era - releasing music on Soundcloud. Now, despite only being 24 years young, she’s got quite a bit of weight under her name.
THe booming social media platform Tik Tok has also helped raise Doja Cat’s fame. Her popularity furthered as she uploaded songs, music videos and addictive dance challenges.
Since 2015, Doja Cat’s career has been nothing short of a roller coaster. Arriving at where we are today, she has joined an ever-growing list of those who are victims of cancel culture. Is it justified? Probably. Will she earn redemption? Who knows. But hopefully, this piece will allow you to make up your own mind.
Credit: Ringer Illustration
Early Life
Amalaratna Zandile Dlamini was born on October 21st, 1995 in Tarzana, Los Angeles. Her father is a famous South African singer, producer, and actor, named Dumisani. Her mother, Deborah Elizabeth Sawyer is a Jewish-American painter. Given her parents’ careers and where she was born, a career in creativity is nothing short of surprising; apples do not fall far from the tree, and it is clear how Doja Cat’s parents fuelled and influenced her creativity. Her mother listened to a lot of Hip-Hop music, including Fugees, Earth, Wind & Fire, Tupac and Erykah Badu - just to name a few.
Her father was under fire for being absent in her life. Since her rise to fame, he’s been viewed as someone who wants to capitalise on that; his reappearance in her life was coincidental with her catapult rise to stardom. Publicly, Doja claims she has never met him, but who are we to judge, eh? No family is perfect.
As a child, Doja participated in a lot of sports, but dancing (ballet, tap, jazz) and skating were her true hobbies. Very eccentric and different to many, veering away from the typical team sports the US promotes. Her aesthetic is of skating is present in her music video “Bottom Bitch” This song was off her album “Hot Pink” which was released in 2019.
Doja certainly had a busy childhood which reflects in her personality and how she comes across as a person: eccentric, bubbly and provocative. This is shown in most of her interviews.
Doja Cat also dropped out of high school at the age of 16, where she learned how to sing, rap and use garageband to make music. To most dropping out of school might be a setup for failure, but she used it to learn skills to help her succeed; her tenacity had paid off.
Rise to Fame
In 2014, at the age of 18, Doja Cat released So High, the track hitting over 5 million views on Youtube. The song caused some controversy as she implied racial prejudices through the lyrics: “Now we both look Asian”. This is clearly racist, and I don’t think Doja should have mentioned this in the song. She could have worded it differently as of course it would cause upset to people, east asians in particular. Having said that, Doja Cat is not the only one to say lyrics that are controversial. Doja Cat started to become known as an artist who does not take any prisoners. The press and social media were all over this and it seemed like it would not get better for Doja Cat anytime soon.
Then, in 2015, she released “Dindu nuffin”. The phase itself, in a nutshell, is a derogatory slang term to demean victims of police brutality. It was at this moment that people started to notice that Doja Cat was problematic. Social media is a very powerful tool these days for people to voice their opinions, and it was made known via Twitter, especially. The root publication writes an article on the song, and the impression is that it would be hard to get that out of people’s minds to make a song directly aimed at black people and a term white supremicists groups use. Have a listen for yourself and form your own opinions.
In 2018, Doja Cat released “Mooo!”, which instantly went viral. The song is about Doja wanting to be a cow, and the other farm animals hating on her. The irony about its popularity is in its simplicity. The lyrics sound almost like a nursery rhyme, to the point that it seems like anyone could have written them.
Cancel culture: What exactly is cancel culture?
Online shaming/Cancel culture is when you force someone out of their social circles mainly online but it can also be in real life. It is modern day ostracism. What makes it modern is because this form of dismissal is usually done via social media, on platforms such as Tumblr (and mainly) Twitter. Sometimes it is effective and can tarnish one's career and image whether it was five or even twenty years ago. It can also cause major embarrassment (and detriment) due to the amount of public shaming involved. We live in a society where a lot of celebrities put their personal and professional lives online, and the whole world can comment even down to the crazy cat lady, Nobody is safe.
I have also noticed with cancel culture that when celebrities are called out on their bullsh*t, they have no choice but to apologise. Is this really sincere, or are they only apologising because you they been caught out? The question remains…
There have been so many celebrities that have been cancelled, especially in 2020. Some of them include Ellen Degeneres, Lana Del Ray, Vanessa Hudgens and Johnny Depp. A prime best example of the cancel culture and how much of a massive impact it can make is R.Kelly. Let's leave it at that...
Cancel Doja Cat?
Many publications including Teen Vogue, Refinery 29, Vulture and Syrup started to write about Doja Cat being cancelled.
The cancel culture is very real. Earlier this year, influencer Nella Rose's tweets (amongst other influencers and YouTubers) about her opinions on black women were resurfaced and she was dragged through the mud for it. The girl was so young when she wrote those tweets, yet nobody seemed to care. According to social media, she needed to be cancelled. I mention Nella Rose because it's similar to what Doja Cat is experiencing. The only difference is that this one is worse and more painful.
Source: Pop Crave
Doja Cat is not new to being accused of racism and causing controversy with her lyrics. But the last time, enough was enough. In May 2020, it was discovered that she has been a participant in an alt-right group where she was in these public chat rooms from a young age.
Doja Cat was silent for a while, but the proof was shown that she was actually in a group chat up to 6 days before the 22nd of May.
A few days later, on the 24th May Doja Cat took to Instagram to apologise. The general consensus was anger from the majority but also disappointment especially from her fans as they saw another side that they didn't expect to see. Was the apology genuine? I am not sure. To be part of an alt-right group is pretty big - young age or not. It is ironic that Doja Cat mentioned that she is half South African and she is very proud to be a black woman. To say that does not match with her actions which makes it questionable, in my opinion.
I do believe she is proud of her heritage and where she’s from, but I think she has left a bad taste in people’s mouths; unfortunately, you cannot hide from your past (where you possibly could have before) in this day in age thanks to the internet. It is interesting to compare her apology to other celebrities’ apologies when they have been cancelled. For example, Rihanna had to apologise to the muslim community for playing a song - Doom by artist Coucou Chloe - which includes a Muslim text known as a Hadith at her latest Savage X Fenty fashion show.
This apology is heartfelt, and Rihanna genuinely meant this apology. No, she is not perfect, at all (who is?) but her record is pretty clean in comparison to Doja Cat’s and she did something to rectify the situation pretty quickly by working on getting the song urgently removed from all streaming platforms. I could compare countless apologies from different scenarios, but the fact of the matter is, if you know it is genuine, you just know. I shall leave that to you to decide.
Since May 2020, Doja Cat has been busy. She is still active on Twitter after changing her Twitter name numerous times, but she is still doing what she’s doing, unapologetically. She is a character, there is no denying that, and she has made some distasteful choices. She has however recently stated that she is leaving Tik Tok, saying she feels uncomfortable with making them and gets bullied and harassed by critics and keyboard warriors.
What is Doja Cat up to now?
She has however, been making waves in the music scene, having recently done a remix to Ariana Grande’s 34+35 song with Megan Thee Stallion where she spits some risque lyrics, which just flows well as it goes with her whole image and aesthetic, and then a hit with Saweetie titled ‘Best Friend’, a fun, bubblegum pink girly anthem for all the besties out there.
Moral of the whole story? Everything in the darkness always comes out to light. Is Doja Cat’s career over? I’m not sure. I see this happen all too often and it’s not too long before someone else is under the limelight. Time will tell.
Words by © Cartèlea.
