Doja Cat has seen a striking rise in her popularity over the last five years. The singer-rapper first shot to fame due to an internet meme, but her music soon captivated the globe.
Though Doja Cat earned viral success with her 2018 novelty song “Mooo!,” her sophomore album Hot Pink proved that she has come to the spotlight to stay. The singer-rapper recently released her fourth studio album, Scarlet in 2023, which adopted a hip hop-oriented sound and peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200. Scarlet‘s lead single “Paint the Town Red” has also become Doja’s most successful song to date.
As much as fame follows Doja Cat, controversies line up behind her too. The 28-year-old California-born star has been continuously surrounded by controversies since 2018. Many of these involve racist comments against African-American communities and the use of foul words. Amidst these, she once clarified her ethnicity in a now-deleted Instagram post (via Pop Buzz). So, what is Doja Cat’s ethnicity?
Is Doja Cat Black?
Doja Cat was born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini on Oct. 21, 1995, in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. But soon after her birth, she moved to Rye, New York, to live with her maternal grandmother, a Jewish architect and painter. Her mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American graphic designer of Jewish heritage, while her father is a South African actor and dancer, named Dumisani Dlamini.
Doja once opened up that she had no interaction with her father growing up, and “though they have since connected on social media, she has never met him in person” (via Rolling Stone). But keeping it aside, her parentage makes Doja biracial, being Caucasian on her mother’s side and of Zulu descent on her father’s side.
Doja Cat spoke candidly to Rolling Stone about her upbringing as a mixed-race child and her experiences living in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Oak Park. In their childhood community, Doja and her brother were among the few, if not the only, mixed-race children. She disclosed that her brother used to tease her for not having Black friends and that the majority of her childhood mates were white and Jewish.
Alexis Haines, her and her brother’s babysitter also revealed that Doja would constantly beg her to flat-iron her hair. Her consciousness about her being “different” and racism associated with her half-black ethnicity also came early,
“I looked different. My hair was different. People were very racist and very rude and unhinged and weird.”
Nevertheless, Doja is confident in who she is and has become one of the most popular modern singers and female rappers via sheer talent. Her main inspiration, according to her, is Nicki Minaj, the queen of female rap in the modern era.