Doja Cat often ends up in the hot seat for her online behavior. Most recently, the Scarlet artist caught heat for sharing a photo of herself wearing a t-shirt with the face of a controversial figure.
In October, Doja Cat posted a selfie on Instagram that got a lot of attention. Her outfit featured a picture of Sam Hyde, the co-founder of the Million Dollar Extreme sketch comedy troupe.
Hyde reportedly supported Alt-Right content creators and white nationalists. Additionally, far-right message board users sometimes push the narrative that Hyde is a police suspect following mass shootings.
Doja Cat addressed her decision to put on a Sam Hyde-decorated shirt during an interview with Ebro Darden on Apple Music 1. According to the 28-year-old rapper/singer, the backlash was overblown.
“You can’t know everything,” Doja Cat told Darden. “Me wearing a t-shirt of somebody who I thought was funny is an attack on people… It’s not an attack. It didn’t affect the world in a way where we now have to look behind our backs.
“I feel like it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter what some people know. There are fans that I have who know that I don’t put any effort or any involvement into whatever the f### that negative-a## s### was. I am more just—funny guy on t-shirt, wore it that day.”
She continued, “I don’t need to explain myself. I don’t need to prove myself to a bunch of people who are just going to project no matter what I say. There are people who are incredibly dogmatic. It doesn’t matter what the f### you do, what you say. They’re always going to stand by, ‘That person’s evil.'”
The Sam Hyde t-shirt controversy wasn’t the first time Doja Cat faced accusations of aligning with white nationalists or Alt-Right trolls. #DojaCatIsOverParty became a trending topic on social media in 2020 after the “Say So” hitmaker allegedly interacted with white supremacists in Tinychat forums.
“I learned that there are racist people who come in and out of the chat,” she insisted at the time. “They happen, then they’re banned. The idea that this chat room is a white supremacist chat room—I don’t understand it in any way.”
The RCA recording artist added, “I’ve seen it and I know I’ve been targeted by it, and I know that it’s controllable. But the narrative that it’s a white supremacist chat is completely incorrect. It’s absolutely, 100% f###ing incorrect.”