Music Manger and Capito A&R executive Gordan Dillard talked about discovering his client Doja Cat and praised her skills, “When she raps, she raps harder than anybody,” in a recent interview with Boardroom.
Gordan started off by saying, “ I ended up in Miami for New Year’s a few years back and I met this guy named Yeti [Beats], who is one of the guys [that was] part of discovering Doja and worked with her for years. He’s one of her main collaborators and producers. I met him in Miami with a few friends we shared mutually. They were looking for new management at the time, and I had just started a new partnership with Maverick [Management]. He eventually introduced me to her and the rest of the team and we started working. Since [2018], it’s been history.”
Dillard then talked about how he saw a star in her, “When she played me the Amala album, I thought she had something that was just different. Meeting her in person, her personality — one, she’s the sweetest person ever. Two, she has this energy. You gotta be around her to feel it, but she has this nonchalance. Like, nothing is going to impact her. When you talk to her, she knows exactly what she wants, and she doesn’t falter on those things. She doesn’t bend.”
“Doja is also very dynamic. When she raps, she raps harder than anybody. I hadn’t something like that [from a woman in rap] since Nicki Minaj. I remember the first performance I saw of hers was at the Pot of Gold Festival in Arizona. The way she commanded the crowd and the acceptance of where she was in her career, she wasn’t a prima donna. I’m like, ‘This girl is a star in the making,’” he added.
‘Megan Thee Stallion wasn’t big yet’
Talking about the biggest ‘obstacle’ he faced while getting the mainstream to accept Doja Cat, Gordan said, “To be fair, it was already moving. [“MOOO!”] had already come out. There was already movement, and people were really fucking with Doja, so it was really just getting the gatekeepers and the masses to accept another female artist, a female rapper when there weren’t that many at that time.”
He further added, “I know it sounds crazy because we’ve seen an influx of them in the last couple of years, but in 2018, there weren’t that many. It wasn’t widely accepted, in my opinion. You had Cardi B or your Nicki Minaj, but even Megan Thee Stallion wasn’t big yet. She was growing. It was just building the creative [around Doja] because we understood that we had to put her out there visually before anything else, and that had to make the story.”