Doechii is rap’s rookie of the year

About a third of the way through a recent appearance at the coveted NPR Music Tiny Desk performance space—during the densely rugged “Catfish”—Doechii growls. And she growls. Then, she growls again. As the singer-songwriter and MC does this, the notoriously (and intentionally) small crowd behind the camera teems with excitement. Doechii looks palpably invigorated at the fact that she’s killing her performance, her eyes widening as though her pupils are expanding and contracting with each snarl. This is a committed woman. “I’m hungry,” she told Apple Music presenter Zane Lowe in a December interview recapping her banner year. “I want to be the best.” If the year of our Lord 2024 counts for anything at all, Doechii is well on her way to that achievement.

A 26-year-old musician, storyteller, and proud theater kid from Tampa, Florida, Doechii has been taking steps toward this moment for years. Her early projects, 2019’s Coven Music Session Vol. 1 and 2020’s Oh The Places You’ll Go, reflect a sexually explorative, freedom-seeking, and above all else, talented rapper and singer who was finding her way in the darkness of being an underdog. She may not have had the limelight to guide her, but she’s been motivated by the light of her faith. On “God” from Oh The Places You’ll Go, Doechii speaks aloud her interpretation of the limitlessness of a higher power. “If I am a product of the greatest artist of all time, which is God, if I am a product of the original creator and He has an unlimited supply of creative energy, that means I have access to an unlimited supply of creative energy,” she opines. “I have an unlimited supply of lyrics, and songs, and visions, and jobs, and money, and houses. I have that—I have access to an unlimited supply.” In 2024, Doechii became the full embodiment of that manifestation.

Her Alligator Bites Never Heal mixtape, released on August 30, continues this theme of expressed belief in purpose. The project features threads of a conversation with a matriarch-like figure who calls Doechii back to her long-established relationship with God. “God made a day 24 hours,” the nurturing voice says on “Bloom,” as Doechii agrees in the background. “It’s not a lot of time. Because you just can’t do it all in one moment. There’s the past, present, and future.” As much as the tape is buoyed by an innate understanding of faith, it’s also carried by Doechii’s remarkable balance of balmy irreverence (“GTFO”) and edgy intensity (“Stanka Pooh”). She rips through the atmosphere of traditional hip-hop itself on tracks like “Bullfrog” and “Boiled Peanuts” before scaling back into the recesses of her vulnerability on songs like “Hide N Seek” and “Wait.” She stands a world apart from her contemporaries on “Boom Bap,” a spacious, uninhibited production on which she declares “I’m everything!” directly in the faces of those attempting to put her in a box.

The standouts of Alligator Bites Never Heal, “Nissan Altima” and “Denial Is A River,” feature Doechii at her most determined. The former song is a showcase of her well-trained tongue-twisting abilities, and the latter is as narrative-driven as a hilariously disastrous rom-com. Doechii has something to say, and she’s willing to go through the gamut of experiences and artistic practices to have her voice heard. The result of this outright dedication to greatness in mixtape form is three Grammy nominations for Best New Artist, Best Rap Album, and Best Rap Performance for “Nissan Altima.” (Though it doesn’t populate under her name on the Grammy site, Doechii is also mentioned for Best Remixed Recording for the Kaytranada remix of her song “Alter Ego” featuring JT.)

Doechii celebrated the tape by embarking on her own sold-out, headlining fall tour, which was capped off by a main stage performance at the 10th installment of Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival in Los Angeles on November 16. Acknowledging that the sea of attendees was likely there for Tyler, Doechii set out to win the crowd over. From the moment she strutted onto the stage and demanded attention, to a surprise appearance from SZA (who called Doechii “the future”) for their “Persuasive” collab, to the final song she performed, Doechii enraptured the audience, encouraging crowd participation and leaving with more fans than she arrived with. When she reappeared later that night alongside Tyler, the Creator, for the CHROMAKOPIA sweet spot “Balloon,” Doechii was just as dynamic of a performer as Tyler, who’s been in the game for at least twice as long as she has. At the end of the song, the audience began chanting her name, a sign of fanfare to come.

Driven by a desire to uplift her origins, Doechii injects her projects, performances, and platforms with a commitment to highlighting Blackness. The aforementioned Tiny Desk featured an all-Black femme-presenting band, with nearly every musician donning cornrows and beads—a longtime staple in Black culture that Doechii herself has heavily embraced this year—and “preppy office siren” outfits styled by Sam Woolf. “I wanted to make sure that I highlighted Black women in my performance because I just feel like sometimes we’re underrepresented,” Doechii said in the Apple Music interview. “I want them to be the stars, I want them to be in the front. I want them to have their moment.” With her hypewoman and DJ Miss Milan at her side, Doechii moved effortlessly through eight songs that spanned from Oh The Places You’ll Go to Alligator Bites Never Heal, her pinpointed energy rising and falling through a concerted effort to keep the crowd engaged but perpetually on their toes.

Just one day prior to her Tiny Desk Concert being uploaded online, Doechii’s performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was posted. Yet another artistically stunning moment, Doechii again chose to center Black women: this time, herself and her two backup dancers. The three of them were literally bound together by the length of their braids, a feat executed by hair artist Malcolm Marquez. Inspired by singer-songwriter and musician Solange Knowles, Barcelona-based art director and photographer Carlota Guerrero, and the late rapper MF Doom, Doechii choreographed and perfected the performance herself—her first ever attempt—in a matter of four days. “This is my take on the future of Hip Hop,” Doechii posted to X on Dec. 5. “This is blackness. This is luxury. This is history.”

With ample success comes inevitable detractors. Her dominance of the year has some crying foul on social media, claiming that she’s an industry plant, despite her five-plus years of visibility in the field. Meanwhile, other naysayers have referred to Doechii’s artistic output as “Harriet Tubman music.” Unfortunately, this kind of description being hurled at earnest artists isn’t new. Earlier this year, Drake rapped on the “Family Matters” diss track that Doechii’s former TDE labelmate and inspiration Kendrick Lamar was “always rapping like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed.” This backward assessment of music that homes in on the Black experience—Black pride, Black struggle, Black liberation, Black excellence—points to the splintering of hip-hop from its deliberate foundation.

Our music has always been deep. It’s always been complex and it’s always been soulful/spiritual. We use hip hop to evolve. To protest. To celebrate. Etc. Art/music plays a role in why a lot of us are proud to be black today. Our culture is all through these genres. Don’t let…

— Swamp Princess🐊 (@officialdoechii) December 12, 2024

In a December 11 post to X, Doechii addressed this attempt to weaken the bedrock of rap, while simultaneously unraveling the meaning behind her culturally resonant works. “Our music has always been deep,” she wrote. “It’s always been complex and it’s always been soulful/spiritual. We use hip hop to evolve. To protest. To celebrate. Etc. Art/music plays a role in why a lot of us are proud to be black today. Our culture is all through these genres. Don’t let these people brainwash you into disconnecting from the soul of hip hop by convincing you it isn’t cool or it’s ‘too deep.’ It’s always been that deep for us and it should stay that way. We created it! Once we lose the soul we’ve lost the genre. Nobody should be redefining our art form but us. Anybody talking shit about hip hop that makes you think or makes you feel something—should immediately be recognized as a opp. Ask yourself what they gain from us watering down our music, taking the soul out, only discussing surface level topics and becoming less conscious. Only a specific group of people benefit from us not being introspective. Tighten up.”

Doechii has a vision, and she’s doing everything in her power to make it come to fruition. She isn’t confined by restrictions, and she doesn’t rely on just one formula. She thrives on the infiniteness that performance art affords her, transforming and evolving while still holding tight to the influences that have molded her into the creative she is today. She’s resurrecting a feeling that hasn’t been felt in years, an earned confidence that’s backed up by hard work and ingenuity. Not only that, she’s exceptionally focused on bringing the connectivity of Blackness and meaningful, communal messaging back into hip-hop.

2024 belonged to one artist and one artist only: Doechii.