🐱Is Doja Cat Really Quitting Music?
We write a weekly newsletter on all things Music, and the Business and Tech behind it. If you’d like to get it directly in your inbox, subscribe now!
Happy weekend everyone!
Whenever I think of Paraguay, there are two things which come to mind:
Roughly the same size as California, Paraguay holds the record for longest dictatorial regime in South America, with Alfredo Stroessner- the son of a German, ruling the country between 1954 and 1989, during when it became a popular safe haven for Nazi war criminals of WW2 🇩🇪
This along with it’s football fanatic population is pretty much the only thing that I can relate with when it comes to this landlocked country in the middle of South America 🇵🇾
However, last week when news flashed that Pop Star Doja Cat was quitting music as a result of backlash from Paraguayan fans who couldn’t attend her gig at the Asuncionico 2022 festival, I realised how crazy the country is about music 😳
In just a short-span of less than a decade, some of the records Doja’s music has set, are nothing short of impressive 👇🏻
⏯ Female rapper with the most monthly listeners in Spotify history (51.8M)
⏯ Guinness World Record alongside Nicki Minaj for the first female rap duo to rank #1 on the Billboard 100 with their collaboration ‘Say So’
⏯ Planet Her becoming the most streamed album by a female rapper in Spotify history.
⏯ First Female Rapper to cross 2 Billion streams on Spotify.
So what made Doja Cat call it ‘quits’ to a career that was arguably at its peak?
When the Day 1 of the Asuncion Music Festival, where Doja was set to perform alongside Foo Fighters, Machine Gun Kelly and Miley Cyrus was cancelled because of an intense storm, fans took to Twitter to cite their displeasure 🤬
While a few of the other headliners reached out to their fans and even threw an impromptu concert outside their hotel, Doja did not hesitate to pushback at her fans, after receiving backlash from those who waited outside the airport in the storm to meet her ⛈
While I wouldn’t look too much into an emotional tweet, it prompted me to go down the rabbit hole of how exactly Doja become this global phenomenon in Hip-Hop music? 🤔
If you made it this far, it seems like you’re digging our content! Why not help support us by sharing this?
Born and raised in LA, Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini aka ‘ Doja Cat’ dropped out of school at the age of 16, struggling with ADHD.
Dropping out of junior year, she constantly started looking for instrumentals and beats on YouTube to create her own music and taught herself to rap, sing and produce in the process 🗣
Inspired by the likes of Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, Nicki Minaj and Drake, Doja like any other kid trying to break into the music industry at her age, started using SoundCloud, to put her music out there.
https://twitter.com/amalazandile1/status/1383153104946888706?s=20&t=TVAf0NgreMToQG_0SdX9NA
It was only later in 2012 that she caught the eye of American record producer Yeti Beats with her first permanent release on the platform “So High”.
The track was then recorded at his studio and was featured on an episode of the television show ‘ Empire ‘ 📺
With this, Doja ended up signing her first record deal with RCA Records and Kemosabe Records in 2014 at the age of 17.
With a record deal in hand, a 17 year old Doja released her first EP ‘ Purrr!’
Only 3 years into the scene, Doja started experiencing writer’s block which denied her a chance to feature on Billie Eilish’s 2017 track ‘Bellyache’
With her Label suddenly not showing a lot of love, Doja decided to take matters into her own hands and returned from her hiatus with a viral track Mooo!, which was probably one of the first instances of artists harnessing the true power of memes to blow up their music 📲
It was this 2018 self-produced Lo-Fi track that laid the foundation for the 11x Grammy nominated singer’s iconic music career.
The internet viral meme that Doja Cat claims was entirely shot & produced within 12.5 hours of a single day skyrocketed her career ever since its release 🚀
With 5 Million views in just 2 weeks on YouTube, it only required her to create a video in a cow-print outfit with two McDonald’s fries stuck in her nose singing ‘Bitch, I’m a Cow’ 🐮
If only everyone knew it was that easy 🙄
Following the success of her viral internet meme, she released Tia Tamera, an instant banger in nightclubs, and ‘ Juicy’, both garnering millions of streams, irrefutably proving Doja as a marketable artist to the Record Labels 💰
The internet, specifically TikTok gave her a second shot to fame when her 2020 hit ‘Say So’, became a trending TikTok dance amassing 19.8 million video creations using the song’s chorus 🤯
Doja’s tracks still remain at the centre of the platform with almost all of them making their way to becoming viral dance challenges even today.
Her 3rd studio album ‘Planet Her’ released in June 2021 and immediately made history by becoming the first album by a female rapper to spend 6 months in the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 📈
While I have no clue how real or otherwise Doja Cat’s retirement is, thumb-twiddling on Twitter and actually stepping away from a career that is unlike any other rapper’s at just 26 years of age are two very different things 🤷🏻♀️
If nothing, here’s a playlist on Doja Cat’s greatest hits to soundtrack your weekend. Have a good one 🍻
If you liked this newsletter from Incentify, why not share it with someone you like?
P.S- Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more such content on all things Music and Culture, now!
Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com on April 2, 2022.
