[Singing] "Let’s break the internet."
Doja Cat is no stranger to breaking the internet.
But, in many ways, this top singer-rapper
also IS the internet -- an artist born of,
inspired by, and, ultimately,
beholden to its unique language and fleeting fascinations.
"You should listen to 'Juicy.'"
"Juicy?"
"Yeah.
It's about butts."
Her big break came from the joke song "Mooo!" that became a popular meme.
Then "Say So" became a hit
after it soundtracked a viral dance challenge on TikTok.
Thanks to these platforms, her songs have landed in the Billboard Top 10,
been featured in the hit movie Birds of Prey,
and even scored a remix from Nicki Minaj.
[Rapping] "He ain’t never seen it in a dress like this."
So this star who’s built her career around being "meme-able"
makes for a fascinating case study in just how social media
and the need to "go viral" are affecting the music industry.
"The internet's a whole other world."
Here’s our take on Doja Cat’s modern brand of stardom,
and what her career tells us about the ups and downs of viral fame.
"What do I need to do to make bird-watching go viral?"
"You need a meme."
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Most of the world first met Doja Cat through her 2018 video "Mooo!"
[Rapping] "Bitch, I'm a cow."
which found the singer, among other things,
dancing with French fries stuffed up her nose.
But this memorable introduction, which has netted her
more than 71 million YouTube views and counting, actually came along
some five years into her musical career.
"It just took a long-ass time."
"Just a long-ass time."
Her debut single, "So High," released on Soundcloud,
attracted the attention of RCA Records in 2013,
"When do you go from I can't do this to maybe I can?"
"Soundcloud, dude."
and was featured on the TV show Empire the next year.
But despite her early successes, Doja Cat failed to gain much traction.
Her 2018 album Amala didn’t generate much buzz either,
even from Doja herself.
"I'm not, like, personally, I'm not even crazy about that album."
Then came "Mooo!"
The song was never intended to be taken seriously.
"It was an inside joke that everybody just happened to see."
Doja was -- as she often is --
just hanging out with her fans on Instagram Live.
She was riffing on her cow-print costume, just having fun.
"And I’m just like, hitting the keys and I’m like, 'You know what?
I’m just gonna make a song about cows'"
She freestyled a series of clever lyrics.
[Rapping] "Grade A ho, Not lean."
And encouraged by her Instagram audience,
she finished "Mooo!" and its accompanying video clip
in just under a few hours.
"All it is is the Photo Booth app on my laptop.
I opened that up.
I pinned some sheets to my wall and then I found some gifs."
This unlikely jumpstart for her career
introduced Doja Cat to a huge mainstream audience.
"I’ve gotten so much support from that.
People love that song."
Although it seemed like a fluke,
"Mooo!" was only born after years of Doja Cat honing her craft.
"I was just trying and trying and practicing."
Yet it’s undeniable that Doja Cat seems
to have an innate flair for catching the internet’s
ever-shifting wind in her sails.
"So, you’re very very good at going viral."
She’s naturally hilarious,
capable of ad-libbing meme-worthy jokes
about subjects as banal as birdwatching.
"Then superimpose the face of DJ Khaled
and then just edit in 'We the best.'
'We the best.'
'Anotha one.'
And be like that’s the mating call."
She has a knack for harnessing up-to-minute trends.
"It’s like my e-girl like sickly look,
where I look like I just woke up
and blew my nose and I have pneumonia."
She’s also adept at two of the internet’s most valued currencies:
absurdist humor and sex.
"Cause I made a booby song,
so I was like, aight, let me just make a butt song."
On "Tia Tamera," she serenades her own breasts,
using the names of the stars of the ‘90s sitcom "Sister, Sister."
[Rapping] "My twins big like Tia, Tamera."
She also knows the value of visuals--
arguably, the most distinctive element of her work.
"Look at all the colors, dude.
Like, every music video is so different."
Whether she’s twerking while wearing nothing but a cherry emoji,
or dressed up as a sexy cat-lady-boss,
smuggling live mice,
"I wanted like a cat mafia moment."
Doja Cat has shown a knack for cultivating the kind of
"found object aesthetic" that proliferates online --
art that’s based on the juxtaposition of the quotidian and the unexpected,
or on the displacement of objects from their natural habitat.
Doja Cat has made the internet a crucial component of her career,
and planted her flag on one corner of it, in particular.
Doja Cat is one of the best examples
of an artist who’s built lasting success
in part through channeling popularity on TikTok,
"Oh, I’ve heard this!
I think I’ve heard this on TikTok."
the video-sharing app that’s become
almost synonymous with "dance challenges"
featuring everyone from teenagers to dogs
to Dame Judi Dench.
In January 2020, a TikTok user named Haley Sharpe
uploaded her own choreographed dance to Doja Cat’s "Say So."
She was the first in more than 20 million
"Say So" videos on the platform,
and that viral fame translated into making "Say So" a Top 40 hit worldwide.
"what was it like watching this just go crazy on Tik-Tok?"
"I didn't know people liked disco so much."
Other Doja Cat songs "Juicy," "Boss Bitch,"
and even her 2016 track "Candy"
have all seen a surge in popularity thanks to the app.
[Singing] "I keep it juicy, juicy, I eat that lunch."
And Doja Cat is clearly aware of just
how much she owes to her TikTok following.
Her official "Say So" video includes both those dance moves
that made it go viral, and the TikTok user who created them.
"Thank you Haley, I love you so much."
As Rolling Stone wrote, "[TikTok] has become a staging ground for hits --
Lil Nas X’s 'Old Town Road,' Ambjay’s 'Uno,'
Y2k and bbno$’s 'Lalala,' and Lizzo’s 'Good as Hell' —
before they crash into the mainstream."
"How the song blew up, it went viral on TikTok."
But what is it that makes a TikTok hit?
Looking at TikTok’s most popular songs,
we can identify three key elements to a songs’ success.
One is that the song must sound different.
Maybe it’s direct, conversational speech,
"Did I really just forget that melody?"
"Naw, na, na, banana-na"
unusual sound effects,
"3-2-1 Go!"
or simply a unique chord progression.
Doja Cat excels at this, consistently keeping her listeners guessing
with a diverse repertoire,
and creating characters to deliver her songs.
"I have an alter ego.
It’s like a middle-aged African Auntie.
[Singing] "Go down!
Go down!
Go down!"
The second most important element of TikTok success
is a satisfying beat drop,
crucial for those dramatic transitions
that allow users to make energetic videos.
They deliver a satisfying moment of surprise.
Finally, TikTok hits usually have lyrics that are easily lip-synced.
Or, more importantly, dance-synced.
The dance challenge for Megan Thee Stallion’s "Savage,"
for example, has a separate move for every adjective in the chorus.
[Rapping] "Sassy, moody, nasty."
Constantly reinventing herself, colorful, sexy and sarcastic,
Doja Cat is the ideal musical artist for the digital age.
But there are also some major downsides to getting famous via the Internet.
"Somebody’s gonna be mad for some reason, about something."
All fame is tenuous, but internet fame can be especially fleeting.
Sometimes, it can even be punishing.
"Doja Cat, how do you deal with social media?
Do you look at any of that clutter?"
"So much of the bad ones hurt my feelings."
Less than a month after "Mooo!" broke wide,
Doja Cat faced backlash for a resurfaced tweet from 2015,
where she’d used a homophobic slur to refer to popular rappers
Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt.
She’s continued to attract controversy for parodying Cardi B,
as well as for "throwing shade" at Nicki Minaj’s fans.
"And then that happened, and somebody like threatened my life!"
The swiftness of the outrage has since made Doja Cat
an emblem for the overreach of "cancel culture,"
as well the paradoxical nature of modern stardom.
Social media demands transparency and "realness" from its celebrities,
things that Doja Cat is often lauded for,
but it also punishes people mercilessly
for the weaknesses that "realness" inevitably reveals.
"It’s about talking about the issue and educating people on the issue
instead of trying to make them hate themselves."
There is also the perpetual danger that,
in the never-ending search for edgy content,
creators end up crossing lines they shouldn’t.
"I’ve made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgement".
Viral fame can also be a double-edged sword, creatively.
The internet tends to latch on to things that are new and surprising,
only to abandon them when the novelty wears off.
K-pop sensation Psy, who "broke the Internet" when his 2012 single
"Gangnam Style" racked up billions of views
and briefly took over the world,
has struggled to duplicate its success ever since.
So far, Doja Cat has avoided the fate of being pigeonholed for "Mooo!"
through constant reinvention.
"I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again."
But at the same time,
the pressure for each new hit to look and sound different from the last
has made it difficult for Doja Cat to create a distinct musical persona.
"The more I listen to it, the less I feel like I have an actual grasp
of who Doja Cat is as an artist, what is her sound, what is her style,
what is her anything?"
Doja Cat’s visuals are also usually an amalgam of common internet fads:
‘90s nostalgia, big butts,
bright pastels and neons, 8bit animation, anime, weed,
"Doja is another name for weed."
and, of course, cats.
That kind of trend-hopping can make her work seem ephemeral.
"Doja Cat essentially jumping from one pre-established trendy idea to the next
in hopes that she’ll be able to fish out another hit."
Doja Cat’s trendiness can also lead to overlap
with the work of her contemporaries, adding to the risk of
blending into the crowd.
"I’m getting like Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande vibes."
The video for "Rules" evokes several recent hits,
with its Western aesthetic that nods to Lil Nas’ "Old Town Road,"
cat prosthetics reminiscent of Teyana Taylor’s
in Kanye West’s video for "Fade,"
and shots and styling choices that are eerily similar
to Rihanna’s "Bitch Better Have My Money."
There’s always an element of luck involved in viral fame.
And notably, both of Doja Cat’s biggest hits
were more or less accidental.
"Did you have a TikTok before 'Say So'?"
"Um, no, I didn't have an account."
The need to replicate that success,
and the lack of correlation to the actual effort put into creating it,
can lead to a uniquely uncertain future
for musicians who become virally famous.
Artists may see their creative life-spans shortened
and find themselves unable to achieve longevity
after the dance challenge has died down
or the joke gets old.
Fortunately, Doja Cat has put in the time
for her quote-unquote overnight stardom.
"It’s been a really long, tough ride.
It’s been like 7 years."
And through her successive singles, she’s already proven herself
more than just a funny meme.
"We come for the meme, but we stay for the music."
She has assets that are uniquely suited to our digital age,
the kind of creative restlessness that keeps people guessing,
and a sharp sense of humor that can be ironic, absurdist, or just plain goofy.
"I can be myself, and I can be a silly goose,
and I can do whatever I want, you know, and people --
somebody’s gonna like it."
And, as Doja Cat pointed out in an interview with Elle,
this sensibility is very much in demand:
"We need people who are open to doing something with theme,
something with a cartoonish twist," she said.
"A lot of people my age just know memes.
So, yeah, I think yeah, there's gonna be a lot more meme music."
Whether or not she’ll prove able to create an imprint
that stands the test of time remains to be seen,
but it’s clear we need
Doja Cat right now.
"But just know, I’m tryna make moooves."