Doja Cat issued a statement after she received backlash from fans for allegedly making racist remarks online in the past.
She also addressed a resurfaced 2015 song with an offensive title and for associating with alt-right internet users in a chat room.
After the hashtag #DojaCatIsOverParty started to trend on Twitter, the Say So singer took to Instagram on Sunday and said she never personally took part in “any racist conversations.”
She was accused of taking part in racist video chats and was called out for her song Dindu Nuffin, which Billboard reports is what some call a racist slur mocking Black victims of police violence.
“I want to address what’s been happening on Twitter,” Doja Cat began her post. “I’ve used public chat rooms to socialize since I was a child. I shouldn’t have been on some of those chat room sites, but I personally have never been involved in any racist conversations. I’m sorry to everyone I offended.”
Doja Cat, whose real name is Amalaratna Zandile Dlamini, added that, she is “a Black woman. Half of my family is Black from South Africa and I’m very proud of where I came from.”
“As for the old song that’s resurfaced, it was in no way tied to anything outside of my own personal experience,” she wrote. “It was written in response to people who often used that term to hurt me.”
Doja Cat said that she “made an attempt to flip its meaning” but she recognizes “that it was a bad decision to use the term in my music.”
“I understand my influence and impact and I’m taking this all very seriously. I love you all and I’m sorry for upsetting or hurting any of you. That’s not my character, and I’m determined to show that to everyone moving forward. Thank you,” she concluded her statement.
On Monday night, Doja Cat took to Instagram Live to further address the song from 2015 that had resurfaced.
“The lyrics in the song don’t make sense. I see some of the interpretations of the lyrics. A lot of them are wrong. I can rewrite the lyrics for you guys. I don’t know how important that is but if you need me to, I can,” she said. “But that song is in zero ways, in no way, connected to police brutality or Sandra Bland.”
She continued, “To anybody who I have hurt using this term when I used it, it was because I was in chat rooms all the time and I was kinda locked away and I was always on there dealing with people coming at me left and right talking about different slanderous terms after another.”
“The term that I used in the song was one that I learned that day. People were calling me it left and right,” Doja Cat added.
The Juicy singer also addressed the chat rooms that she used to go to, saying, “the chat room that I go to is a public chat room. It’s me, my friends. You go in there. Now you have to pay $30 to get into the chat room, which is a new thing.”
“But I used to go in there for free and I learned there are racist people who come in and out of the chat,” the 24-year-old singer said. “They’re there. They happen and then they’re banned.”
“The idea that this chat room is a white supremacist chat room is, I don’t understand in any way. I just don’t understand,” she said.
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