📍Topanga, California, USA
2000 – 2012“Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, known as Doja Cat, was born in Tarzana, Los Angeles, in October 1995. Her mother, Deborah Sawyer, is an American painter and designer, and her father is the South African actor and dancer Dumisani Dlamini, who was largely absent from her childhood. She spent her first years in New York with her grandmother, an architect and painter, and then, when she was about eight, she returned to California with her mother and brother to live in the hills and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains on the western edge of Los Angeles. For about four years the family lived at the Sai Anantam Ashram, a Hindu community in the hills near Agoura Hills founded by the jazz musician Alice Coltrane. There she wore headscarves, sang devotional bhajans and took lessons in the Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam. She later said it was a beautiful place but that she did not always feel she could just be a kid. After leaving, the family moved to Oak Park nearby, and she took ballet, tap and jazz, then discovered breakdancing, joining a pop-locking crew and competing in dance battles around Los Angeles. She was a creative, offbeat teenager who loved hip-hop, jazz and anime and taught herself to make beats on her computer. At sixteen she left school and spent her time making music in her bedroom, uploading songs to SoundCloud, which soon brought her a record deal. Her viral 2018 song Mooo! and her albums Hot Pink and Planet Her made her a global star, and the mix of spiritual, artistic and street influences from her childhood runs through her music.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today