SHE'S ONE COOL CAT!

American music sensation Doja Cat talks about her Nicki Minaj collab and her South African roots

- NICI DE WET

SHE named herself after a love of cats and a special strain of the green stuff she used to smoke.

Quirky and creative – that’s Doja Cat. But you can also add super successful and driven to the list because she’s one of the hottest talents in music right now.

In just under a year, the 24-year-old American songbird, daughter of South African actor Dumisani Dlamini, has gone from unofficial TikTok queen to chart-topping pop phenomenon and it’s all thanks to her smash hit, Say So.

After first going viral on the video-sharing site, the catchy disco-infused track caught on in mainstream music circles and it’s quickly become one of the biggest streaming songs of the year.

When rap queen Nicki Minaj jumped on board for a remix, it went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last month, beating out Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage remix and scoring Doja Cat her first No. 1 hit.

Nicki, among the first to congratulate her, tweeted, “Dear Doja Cat. Thanks for trusting me with your baby. I hope I lived up to your expectations. You’re extremely talented and deserving of this moment.”

The quirky star celebrated – quarantine style – at home. “I had put on some pirate gear and then I got a call to go outside. So I go and everyone is standing in the driveway, my mom, my manager . . . and they’re blasting my music. I was like sweating because the neighbours were coming out! But it was really cute,” she told Billboard Live.

As to how she landed a collaboration with a superstar such as Nicki, she said she’d been hoping for it for a long time and then it just happened.

“I felt like I manifested it or something.”