Born and raised in Los Angeles , California , she began making and releasing music on SoundCloud as a teenager. Her song " So High " caught the attention of Kemosabe and RCA Records , with whom she signed a recording contract prior to the release of her debut extended play, Purrr!
After a hiatus from releasing music and the uneventful rollout of her debut studio album, Amala , Doja Cat earned viral success as an internet meme with her single " Mooo! Capitalizing on her growing popularity, she released her second studio album, Hot Pink , in the following year. Her fourth studio album, Scarlet , adopted a hip-hop -oriented sound and peaked within the top five of the Billboard , while its lead single " Paint the Town Red " became her most successful song to date, as it marked her first solo number-one on the Hot among eight other countries.
Described by The Wall Street Journal as "a skilled technical rapper with a strong melodic sense and a bold visual presence", [ 1 ] Doja Cat is known for creating videos and performances which achieve virality on social media platforms such as TikTok. Well-versed in Internet culture, she is also famed for her absurdist online personality and stage presence.
She is one of the biggest commercial artists of the s according to Billboard , [ 6 ] and was included on the most influential people in the world by Time in Soon after her birth, Dlamini moved from Tarzana to Rye, New York , where she lived for five years with her maternal grandmother, an architect and painter. Her family then moved to Oak Park , [ 12 ] where she started attending dance lessons and experienced a "sporty childhood", often skateboarding and visiting Malibu for surf camps.
As she grew older and moved away from the ashram, she attended breakdancing classes and joined a professional poplocking troupe, with whom she competed in dance battles throughout Los Angeles while still attending high school. Doja Cat has described life after dropping out of school as "messy", claiming that she slept on the floor and spent "all night and day" browsing the internet, looking for beats and instrumentals from YouTube which she downloaded and used to create her own music.
