Doja Cat was already making and uploading music years before “Mooo!” went viral. She began experimenting as a teenager, left school in eleventh grade, built a small online audience, signed with RCA Records and released music including the 2018 album Amala. The cow-themed video became a sudden breakthrough—but, by her account, it sent new listeners toward work she had already been making.
Childhood influences and early experiments
Doja Cat’s musical life began well before her online career. Sony Music’s 2018 biography says she studied piano and dance as a child and listened to artists including Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, Nicki Minaj and Drake. A 2023 TIME profile adds that she lived from about ages eight to twelve at a California ashram led by Alice Coltrane, where she learned Bharatanatyam dance. These are parts of her background, not a single explanation for the sound or direction of her later music.
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As a teenager, she started recording and sharing songs online. Sony dates her first SoundCloud upload to 2013, when she was 16, and says she taught herself Logic and composition using a MIDI controller. TIME describes her recording raps over beats she found online and uploading them for a small circle of listeners. The common thread is experimentation: she was learning by making tracks and putting them where people could hear them.
Leaving school and learning to make music
In a 2020 interview with British GQ, Doja said she “dropped out of eleventh grade” and had the equipment she needed to make music. TIME also reported that she left high school at 16. Those accounts give a grade and an age, but not an exact departure date.
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Her early setup and distribution were practical as well as creative. Doja told British GQ that she was using GarageBand and SoundCloud. Sharing work online let her develop music and find listeners without waiting for a conventional release cycle; at first, though, her audience remained small.
From SoundCloud uploads to RCA and Purrr!
Sony Music/RCA Records says Doja signed with RCA during 2014. Her early label-era release was the Purrr! EP, whose lead single was “So High.” Sony’s 2018 biography reported that the track had accumulated over 30 million streams by that time—a historical figure reported by the label, not a current stream count.
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The milestone matters because the viral story did not begin with an unknown person suddenly appearing online. She had been uploading music, developing an audience and releasing songs for years. But having a small group of listeners was different from reaching a broad public.
Amala came before the cow meme
Doja released Amala, her debut full-length album, in 2018. It preceded “Mooo!” and shows that she was already building a body of recorded work before the breakout. In her 2020 British GQ interview, she described her position before the viral moment as neither doing badly nor doing very well: she had some listeners, but not mass attention.
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How “Mooo!” became her first official viral moment
“Mooo!” took a playful, lo-fi approach: Doja appeared dressed as a cow and delivered a string of cow puns. TIME describes the video’s deliberately homemade feel. Sony Music Japan says the song was inspired by a cow-print outfit she wore on tour and took 12.5 hours to make; that production detail comes from an artist-label profile.
Doja later called it her first official viral moment. In British GQ, she said: “The first time I actually officially went viral was when I put out ‘Mooo!’.” She also said the attention encouraged people to give her other music a try: “I think it allowed people to be like, ‘OK, maybe there’s something there,’ and they gave my actual music a try.” The timing, just before her tour, helped raise interest—but the song’s impact was to redirect attention toward an existing catalog, not create one from scratch.
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What the timeline shows
- Teenage years: She experimented with recording and began uploading music to SoundCloud; Sony dates her first upload to 2013, at 16.
- Early career: She left school in eleventh grade, continued making music, signed with RCA during 2014 and released the Purrr! EP.
- 2018: Her debut full-length album, Amala, arrived before the “Mooo!” breakout.
- Viral breakthrough: “Mooo!” brought a much wider audience, and Doja said some of those new listeners went on to explore her other music.
Her path before fame was therefore both gradual and sudden: years of online experimentation and early releases built the foundation, while one unexpected, comic video sharply expanded her reach.
Sources: Sony Music/RCA Records, Doja Cat biography (2018); Olive Pometsey, “How Doja Cat broke the internet,” British GQ (May 1, 2020); Belinda Luscombe, “How Doja Cat Ripped Off Her Shell—And Why She’s Happier For It,” TIME (April 13, 2023); Sony Music Japan, Doja Cat artist profile.
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