‘She actually is all the things!’: how Doechii turned a rap icon – and bagged a Grammy

Last Sunday’s Grammy awards had been a celebration of extensively identified blue-chip expertise: Taylor Swift was there, handing an award to Beyoncé. Shakira carried out a medley, as did Sabrina Carpenter, a comparatively younger star who was pulled into the pop firmament final yr. However the first award given out, for finest rap album, went to a relative unknown, and it created the sort of star-is-born second that award exhibits excel at. Accepting the award for her mixtape Alligator Bites By no means Heal – beating legends comparable to Eminem, Future and J Cole – 26-year-old Florida rapper Doechii started to tear up: “I put my coronary heart and soul into this mixtape. I bared my life,” she mentioned. “I devoted myself to sobriety and God instructed me that I might be rewarded, and that he would present me simply how good it may get.”

Doechii, born Jaylah Hickmon, is barely the third girl ever to win the perfect rap album trophy – after Lauryn Hill (as a part of the Fugees) and Cardi B – and her Grammy capped a banner yr. She has been making music since 2016, however in 2024 she lastly made good on the promise of her early viral singles with a madcap, immensely private album hailed by critics as one of many yr’s finest. Combining the sound of 90s hip-hop with neo-soul and newer rap subgenres, Doechii unpacks the trials and tribulations of younger stardom – drug habit, label disputes, the burden of expectation – with the sharpness and timing of an awesome comedian.

Followers level to her charisma, and her large technical potential: she’s capable of ship advanced high-speed rhymes completely on prime of the beat – as was proven in a while within the Grammys ceremony, in a thrillingly choreographed, relentlessly rapped efficiency of album tracks Catfish and Denial Is a River.

However additionally they admire her emotional honesty. “Doechii is speaking about how she was as soon as engaged, and all these totally different breakups and psychological breakdowns – I do assume that vulnerability is considerably uncommon,” says Mankaprr Conteh, a employees author at Rolling Stone who has lined Doechii’s rise extensively. “She additionally leans into foundational hip-hop – [the album] may be very boom-bappy,” she says, referring to the easygoing breakbeat-driven 90s sound referred to as boom-bap. “However she’s capable of interact with memeability, fashionable language, fashionable considerations. It’s not simply nostalgia – it’s a reverence for the foundations of the style.”

Whereas there are lots of rap artists working with the sounds of the 90s proper now – a mantle taken on with explicit verve by Griselda Information MCs comparable to Benny the Butcher and Conway the Machine – few have been capable of deliver that sound into the mainstream like Doechii. Devin Malik, a producer on Alligator Bites By no means Heal, says that “what makes Doechii distinctive in rap proper now could be fairly easy: authenticity”. Followers crave this, he says, in a world the place “all the things is fabricated, all the things is paid for, everybody’s being offered one thing”.

Working with Doechii on Alligator Bites By no means Heal was “a reasonably straightforward and easy course of,” Malik says, as a result of Doechii was so clear about her targets. “It wasn’t to chart, it wasn’t to promote 100m data. What she wished to attain was simply getting her reality off.”

In Denial Is a River, Doechii casts again to an earlier mindset: “I like tablets, I like medication … I like doing Hollywood shit / Snort it? Most likely would.” However as talked about in her Grammys speech, she challenged herself to get sober forward of constructing the document – she doesn’t drink, use medication, smoke and even drink caffeine – utilizing the self-belief that Conteh says is vital to her success. “I believe Doechii’s artistry is powerful as a result of she is so in tune with who she is as a human being,” she says. “That data of self, that relationship to her religion, I believe, is absolutely grounding for her, in an setting that she admittedly misplaced herself in a bit bit. She talks about her drug use, partying in Hollywood, however was in the end capable of finding herself.”

Doechii completed her speech with an attraction to black ladies in music: “I do know that there’s some black lady on the market, so many black ladies on the market which might be watching me proper now, and I wish to let you know, ‘You are able to do it. Something is feasible.’”

Georgia rapper Vayda says that this second was an acknowledgment of Doechii’s “distinctive” standing within the business. “It’s numerous boundaries – she’s a black girl, a dark-skinned girl at that. We don’t actually see that many dark-skinned women within the mainstream mild,” she says. “She needed to struggle by way of numerous boundaries to make it to the place she’s at. I believe it simply teaches all people like, even in case you fail, even when it takes you a bit bit longer, so long as you’re constant you’re going to make it the place you must go.”

Conteh says that Doechii’s success might present a roadmap for feminine rappers who don’t match a standard mould – whose work could also be grittier or much less historically female – to seek out mainstream recognition. “At any time when something is well-liked, typically there are lots of people doing the same factor, particularly within the sort of ‘pussy rap’ style,” she says, referring to the sexually assured model of artists comparable to Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Latto and Metropolis Women. “That’s to not say that music isn’t wonderful and worthwhile, however there’s a little little bit of a method that Doechii simply doesn’t ascribe to, however you too can inform it’s not one which she devalues. She actually is all the things – she will twerk, she’s excessive style, she will do actually lowbrow stuff, she’s an awesome technical rapper, she’s a singer.

“It simply doesn’t really feel pressured,” she continues. “It simply seems like an artist actually honing themselves and their craft. And I believe that has been actually infectious.”