Doja Cat’s favourite rap verse of all time: “I don’t care what anybody says”
Ever since she broke out on the scene with her 2018 single Mooo!, Doja Cat’s success has been stratospheric. Her charming combination of internet-fluent wit, a chaotic yet glamorous style, and innovation across both lyrics, production and aesthetic has rendered Doja a formidable force not just within hip-hop, but post-pandemic pop music.
She’s one of the best-selling female rappers of all time and has won literally hundreds of accolades. To include a mere few; one Grammy Award, of which she has been nominated 19 times, six Billboard Music Awards, just as many MTV Music Video Awards, and five American Music Awards. Not bad for a woman who describes her parody rap hit Mooo! as a throwaway song.
So naturally, when Doja says something about music – especially hip-hop – it is not to be ignored. Taking to Instagram Live while doing her makeup, Doja discussed what verse she thinks is one of the best across the entire catalogue of hip-hop history.
Listening to Phonte’s verse on Little Brother’s ‘Whatever You Say’, Doja mouths along to the verse and then pauses it to comment. “Bruh, that’s one of my favorite verses in the entire fucking history of rap ever,” she said with a smile. “That shit was so smooth. He didn’t rhyme one fucking word. I don’t care what anybody says.”
She then acknowledges that while the rapper did string together one or two rhymes in the verse, ultimately “it works” because, unlike most rap verses, most of the flow isn’t in rhyme. “You don’t have to rhyme,” she says to her listeners.
This comes mere days after Little Brother’s final dates on their farewell tour Curtain Call: The Final Tour. The rap group, which hails from North Carolina and is held in high respect by both music critics and hip-hop fans, consists of Phonte and Big Pooh, and have been active in the alternative hip-hop and Southern hip-hop genres since 2001.
Fans may know that Doja is not shy about expressing her admiration for her peers within the music industry. She has been especially complimentary to women within the hip-hop scene: she’s said to Billboard that “it’s pretty obvious that I’m in love with everything Nicki Minaj has put out into the world”, and as reported by Big News Network, that watching Beyonce perform ‘Love On Top’ when pregnant was “he most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. …You can do anything, you really can do anything, and I feel like Beyoncé created that lane.”
As for Doja herself, her career is going from strength to strength. Her performance of her lead single Jealous Type from her new studio album Vie at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, in which she performed alongside saxophonist Kenny G, was celebrated online, and Billboard ranked her number 24 in their Top 100 Women Artists of the 21st Century. The year before saw a certification milestone; by surpassing 19 Platinum singles in the US, she tied previous records for female rappers. A remarkable accomplishment, given her single digits in the industry: her Mooo!
The origin story must feel like an utter performance in comparison if you pardon the pun.