Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini (born October 21, 1995), known professionally as Doja Cat (/ˈdoʊdʒə/), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Known for her versatility, live performing skills, internet personality and stage presence, she is frequently referred to as the "Queen of Pop-Rap". Billboard named her "one of the world's biggest pop stars" and "one of the defining pop stars of this era", while Time listed her as one of the world's most influential people in 2023.

Doja Cat 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! (2014). After a hiatus from releasing music and the uneventful rollout of her debut studio album, Amala (2018), she earned viral success as an internet meme with her 2018 single "Mooo!", a novelty song in which she makes humorous claims about being a cow. Capitalizing on her growing popularity, she released her second studio album, Hot Pink, in the following year. The album eventually reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200 and spawned the single "Say So"; its remix with Nicki Minaj topped the US Billboard Hot 100.

Doja Cat's third studio album, Planet Her (2021), spent forty-one weeks in the Billboard 200's top 10 and became the 10th best-selling album globally of 2021. It produced the top ten singles "Kiss Me More" (featuring SZA), "Need to Know", and "Woman". Her fourth studio album, Scarlet (2023), adopted a hip-hop-oriented sound and peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200. Its lead single "Paint the Town Red" topped the Hot 100, the Billboard Global 200, and numerous charts internationally. Her fifth album, Vie, marked a return to her pop roots and also peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200.

Doja Cat is one of the best-selling female rappers of all time, with over 34 million records sold between 2018 and 2022. In 2024, Billboard ranked her as the 24th top woman artist and 2nd female rapper of the 21st century—five years after her first charted record (2019). Since 2020, she has won hundreds of accolades, including a Grammy Award from 19 nominations, six Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, six MTV Video Music Awards and eight iHeartRadio Music Awards.

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini was born on October 21, 1995, in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American graphic designer of Jewish heritage, and her father, Dumisani Dlamini, is a South African performer of Zulu descent, best known for starring as Crocodile in the original Broadway cast of the musical Sarafina! and the 1992 film adaptation. The two had a brief relationship after meeting in New York City where Dumisani performed on Broadway, but he was too busy on tour to spend time with Amala and her brother. He said that he left his family in the US for South Africa out of homesickness in the hopes that they would join him there. He has also claimed that he has a "healthy" relationship with his daughter and that her management team had tried to block all his attempts to contact her out of the fear that they "might lose her". Nevertheless, Dlamini has said on multiple occasions that she is estranged from her father, stating that she "never met him" and later accused him of being a deadbeat to her and her brother.

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. At the age of eight, Dlamini returned to California with her mother and brother to live at the Sai Anantam Ashram, a commune in Agoura Hills. Its spiritual director was jazz musician Alice Coltrane. The family went on to practice Hinduism for four years. Dlamini wore head-covering scarves and sang bhajans while at the temple, saying that she felt like she could not "be a kid" during her time there.

Her family then moved to Oak Park, California, where she started attending dance lessons and experienced a "sporty childhood", often skateboarding and visiting Malibu for surf camps. Dlamini and her brother were also subjected to racial prejudice as some of the only mixed-race children in the area.

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. Her aunt, a vocal coach, had given Dlamini singing lessons to help her audition for Central Los Angeles Area New High School No. 9, a performing arts high school in Los Angeles. She frequently skipped school to participate in online chatrooms. After becoming discouraged about her education and career path, Dlamini claims that she realized in eleventh grade that "performing and music was all [she] ever cared about." She eventually dropped out at age 16 while in her junior year, attributing this decision to her struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), saying that "it felt like I was stuck in one spot and everybody else was progressing constantly."