Doja Cat

Some call the end of summer the “slow news season”—school’s still out, holidays are in full swing and headlines tend to get weird—and Doja Cat (born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini in 1995) knew just what to do about it. In August of 2018, the Los Angeles singer and rapper dropped “Mooo!”, a sultry R&B jam thick with double entendres and sung from the perspective of a cow. It went viral, thanks to an unforgettable, improbably catchy chorus that had people wondering: could she possibly be for real? But Doja, who released her debut EP, Purrr!, in 2014, and her first album, Amala, in 2018, was no novelty act. In the years since, she has proven herself one of pop music’s savviest, most audacious characters. She raps nimbly, switching up her cadence from one syllable to the next, and her pop-culture nods (referencing actresses Tia and Tamera Mowry or sampling blink-182 and Paul Anka) are just as unpredictable as her dizzying flow. Her presentation is both tough and coquettish. As she demonstrated over and over on her 2019 album, Hot Pink, she assumes a fun and fundamentally empowered stance in her singing and rapping about sex. And woe to anyone who might take issue with that: “Sex is meaningful, it is!” she told Apple Music, with her trademark defiant charm. Futuristic, interplanetary adventures fuelled the 2021 album Planet Her, which sees Doja Cat continuing her dominance in expressing the spectrum of feminine experiences. An ardent student of hip-hop, Doja builds her stylistic approach upon the nostalgic elements that coloured rap’s golden eras: her deserved cockiness intertwines with her unique personality, informed by the greats who preceded her. Her desire to be seen as a formidable MC is felt most on 2023’s Scarlet, a provocative project that reflects her desire for freedom and flexibility.