Doja Cat Essentials

Recording and performing as Doja Cat, Los Angeles rapper and singer Amala Dlamini has proven herself one of pop music’s savviest, most audacious characters. Despite debuting in 2014, it wasn’t until her 2018 debut album Amala that she took her rightful place in the public consciousness, thanks to dreamy slow jams like “Candy” and “Go to Town.” But Dlamini truly hit when she leaned more into rapping, collaborating with the likes of Tyga (“Juicy”) and Gucci Mane (“Like That”) while still asserting her mastery of sugary pop with 2020’s “Say So.” Taking a fun and fundamentally empowered stance in her singing and rapping about sex, Dlamini graduated to futuristic, interplanetary adventures on 2021’s Planet Her, enlisting SZA (“Kiss Me More”) and Ariana Grande (“I Don’t Do Drugs”) even as she did awfully well all on her own with the self-affirming “Woman” and openly enticing “Need to Know.” Her biggest cultural moment came with 2023’s Dionne Warwick-sampling “Paint the Town Red,” a slinky and explicit rap track that hit No. 1 in multiple countries. Reasserting her ability as a versatile, sex-positive MC, she went softer on “Agora Hills” and nastier on “Demons,” reinforcing the range of moods available from the self-proclaimed queen.