Most of us will never know what it feels like to be a musician, much less a famous musician, much, much less a musician that’s remembered for the ages. However, according to Harper’s Bazaar, Doja Cat has entered that territory. The singer recently shared what that felt like.
Doja Cat, whose real name is Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, is on the latest cover of the magazine wearing something very fashion-forward (I don’t know anything about fashion guys, sorry).
This edition of Harper’s is called the icon issue, by the way. The magazine asked her “What does an icon mean to you?”
An icon, she said, is someone who’s “changed the trajectory for a specific avenue of culture.” OK, not sure what that means but I’m just a man, not an icon, so obviously I wouldn’t understand.
As for who she considers iconic, Doja Cat named Prince, a “feminine, black male in the pop realm. He’s changed a lot of things for pop, he’s changed a lot of things for music, [and] he’s opened up a lot of doors.”
No argument there. Prince rules. RIP. Her next pick? The controversial Michael Jackson. Also Madonna, Jimi Hendrix (quality choice), and Salvador Dali (hell yeah).
So now that she’s considered an icon along with those very famous names (according to Harper’s), how does that feel? Surprisingly, she’s pretty humble about it.
“I think it’s very sweet. Do I agree with them? No. Do I fully understand why they would say something like that? Not really. But I do appreciate that. I also think that the word ‘icon’ is a misunderstood word now because it’s been so overused. I would say thank you to those people but I don’t know if I’m an icon yet.”
How about that! A famous person who’s also smart and has a dash of humility. How can you hate on that? Check out the whole interview below.
Doja Cat’s latest album, Scarlet, is set to release on Sept. 1. The singer calls it her most introspective one yet.
“This new album is more introspective, but I’m not leaning so hard into that to where it becomes boring. So I want to give stories and bops. It’s a nice mixture of both. I think this project is a really fun canvas for me to play with my rap skills and talk about what’s going on in my life. But I’m not abandoning who I was and what I know about pop and singing and that aspect of music.”
Doja Cat has also been embroiled in some controversy recently. She saw her Instagram following drop dramatically recently after mocking her fans. How bad is it? She’s been losing followers by the tens of thousands on all platforms. One estimate is that she lost 300,000 in July. Oh, to have that many followers to lose!
She also argued with some fans on Threads and told them to “get a job.” She also said she “doesn’t love them” because she doesn’t know them and then deactivated her account. With her fourth studio album Scarlet scheduled to release in just a couple of weeks, one can only hope the back-to-back controversies don’t hurt her record sales.