FEATURE:
Spotlight
Doechii
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ONE of the hottest and most incredible…
artists coming through right now, the spellbinding and hugely powerful Doechii is someone that should be known to all. Regardless of whether you like Rap and Hip-Hop, her music is not confined or defined by genre. A definite icon of the future, I want to combine some interviews with the Florida-born artist. Last August, XXL introduced a breakthrough artist who was definitely turning heads and dropping jaws:
“A talented Tampa, Fla. kid who grew up in the arts—ballet, tap dancing and acting—and sports—cheerleading and gymnastics—Doechii always had varied interests and different routes of self-expression. While in performing arts school and on track to go to college for classical choral singing, she learned about SoundCloud and the DIY music scene from one of her friends in 2015. Utilizing that same friend's home studio, a then-11th-grade Doechii started cutting school to make music. She dropped her first song, "Girls," online in 2016 under the former moniker Iamdoechii. The track starts out almost like a Ciara deep cut, refashioned into a rap song, but the second half highlights her skills as a rapper. Doechii possesses a clarity and control of flows that illustrates she can fit into any lane she wants.
After a stretch of writer's block, that she cured by reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, Doechii decided to stop limiting herself in her music. The multihyphenate was committed to showcasing how she truly felt with her lyrics. In 2019, she delivered the project Coven Music Session, Vol. 1 Her breakthrough moment came last year, when she dropped "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake" on her EP, Oh The Places You'll Go. The song starts off lightly, then takes a turn as Doechii raps frankly about her childhood, from poverty, emotional anguish, issues with other students and more. "Doechii is a dick, I never fit in/Overly cocky, I'm hyper-ambitious/Me, me, me, me/Bitch, I'm narcinassistic/I am a Black girl who beat the statistics/Fuck the opinions and all the logistics," she raps, switching up her flow mutliple times.
Doechii's true-to-herself lyrics and flair resonated both on TikTok and DSPs. "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake" sits at 24 million-plus Spotify streams and nearly 2 million YouTube views now, convincing the young artist that she really had fans and support. This year, she released the five-track Bra-Less EP including "Girls," the song that started it all.
Nowadays, she's courting record label attention and just dropped a scene-stealing verse—she submitted three—on Isaiah Rashad's Kal Banx-assisted track "What U Sed," featured on the TDE rhymer's The House Is Burning album.
Her recent momentum almost feels like it's blindsiding rap, but she's put many years of hard work and time into this; it's simply preparation meeting opportunity. Check out her story in this week's The Break.
Age: 23
Hometown: Tampa, Fla.
I grew up listening to: "A lotta Lauryn Hill, lotta Kanye West, Pharrell. OutKast, my god. When I got a little bit older, Nicki Minaj, for sure. Lauryn Hill, she showed me that I could rap and sing. Lauryn really raps, but she also really, really sings. So, just seeing her be that brave in her music and that vulnerability inspired me to be vulnerable and brave and not really limit myself on my talent. So, I don't have to just be a rapper or a singer, I can do whatever”.
This year has already been busy and productive one for the wonderful Doechii. This is somebody who is going to join the legends of Rap in years to come. Female Rap Room interviewed Doechii earlier this year and highlighted her awesome new single (at the time), Crazy:
“After signing to TDE, she dropped the promotional single “Persuasive” the same day, a laid-back song detailing her love for marijuana. She effortlessly raps over the chilled beat, to create a perfect song for late night partying, comparable to the works of icon Missy Elliot. The track has amassed over 1.4 million streams on Spotify and over 430,000 views on its official YouTube video.
On April 8, she released her official major label debut single “Crazy”, an explosive declaration of confidence. Reminiscent of works by rappers such as Rico Nasty and Azealia Banks, Doechii manages to both embody styles of some of the industry’s strongest players and carve out her own spot. It has already collected over 1 million streams on Spotify and 450,000 views on its official YouTube video, despite being banned from trending on YouTube due to its nudity and violence.
These two songs, as well as her other previously released material, show her wide range of musical versatility and refusal to fit inside any one box or subgenre. Her songs range widely in sound, from the R&B-tinged “Girls” to the early Nicki Minaj-esque “Spookie Coochie”. Despite this wide variety in style, her charisma and delivery link her songs as uniquely Doechii.
Doechii displays an impressive eye for visuals, between the dance breakdowns in “Persuasive” and the high concept, artistic nature of “Crazy”. Her songs also often feature flow changes both between different songs and internally, with “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” featuring numerous different switch-ups. However, no matter which style she embodies, Doechii has yet to truly falter.
The Female Rap Room had the privilege of hosting an interview with Doechii on April 15. The interview can be read below.
Let’s talk about your powerful new single “Crazy.” What does it personally mean to you? Did you feel any pressure with the release?
- Recently I’ve allowed myself to perform at my maximum potential and I like the results. “Crazy” is my debut single and I wanted to make a powerful entrance. The message in “Crazy” is clear; sonically and visually I will not be contained, limited or defined. I felt the most pressure I’ve EVER felt with this release because everything has to PERFECTLY embody the feelings of the single. So I was very anal about this process.
What was the recording process like?
- It was suuupppeerrrr fun! A lot of screaming and stomping on tables lol
How does it feel to be the first female rapper to join the TDE family?
- Pressure. I know I’m not here for no reason and I know that I have a lot of growing to do as a business woman and a writer. But I’m here and my brothers are supporting my journey. I believe I have a chance of impacting hip hop in a very positive way.. like Kendrick, Jay rock, Isaiah etc. But I have to open doors they haven’t yet.
How do you view your journey from where you started to where you’re at now in your career?
- I view it in a very positive way. Along side my music is my instinctual need to teach, I’m really transparent about where I come from and what I’ve learned.
How important is it to support other women in music?
- Its important. When you verbalize your support for other women it makes the space/community more inviting and fun. If you support another woman, tell her 🤎”.
I want to end with the recent interview and profile from NME. Not only has Doechii captivated and ignited passionate following in her native U.S. She is also being noticed and appreciated here in the U.K. You only need to listen to her music for a few minutes to know she will be a big festival headliner very soon:
“Doechii is “meant to blow up like the white things and soda rockets”, to quote the dexterous wordplay at the heart of her breakthrough single, ‘Yucky Blucky Fruitcake’. Released two years ago as part of a fantastical, Dr Seuss-inspired EP titled ‘Oh The Places You’ll Go’, it caught the ear of Top Dawg Entertainment; the label that discovered Kendrick Lamar, and is currently home to Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock and SZA.
After signing to the influential rap label in March this year, the artist appeared on stage with Isaiah Rashad during his set at this year’s Coachella. “I was really nervous,” she says, speaking from LA (raised in Tampa, Florida, Doechii relocated to the West Coast last year). “I did two performances and I feel like I harshly critiqued myself about the first one, so I made sure that when I came back for that second one, I ate it up. It’s less often that I get nervous, but when I do, I get really, really nervous: [with] gas and shit,” she adds nonchalantly. “It gets real ugly, girl.“
She also ended up hitting the road with another of her labelmates. “SZA has this sacredness about her which is so freaking cool,” says Doechii. “I love mysterious women who have this sacred feeling about them, because I’m just not that girl. I could never be mysterious,” she laughs. “I talk too much”.
“You grew up in Tampa. Florida as a whole seems to be in a really strong place at the moment, musically – Mellow Rackz, Nico Sweet, and They Hate Change are three other newer acts heading in really interesting directions right now…
“My experience growing up in Tampa was really colourful, and being from the South, there’s a lot of culture. I think Florida is really evolving [musically] after kind of being at a standstill. Kodak Black was kind of carrying hip-hop in Florida for a long time, but now the sound is starting to evolve, and a lot of artists are finally breaking through. People are really starting to take notice of all the different sounds, which is really beautiful.”
How did signing to TDE come about?
“I had just dropped ‘Oh The Places You’ll Go’ and I was just pushing it by myself, and it got the attention of [the person who would become] my manager – me and her decided to move to New York and follow our dreams, y’know, shit like that. I was sleeping on my dad’s sofa, and got this random call. My manager was like, ‘Bitch: TDE wants to fly us out.’ I went out there [to California], and I told myself, ‘I’m not going home without being signed.’”
“I always thought I would be independent my entire life, but if I was ever gonna sign to a label, it needed to be TDE. That’s what happened. I spent the first night with TDE making ‘Crazy’. It was that type of energy, I was hungry, and I still am. I did end up leaving because they signed me within the week. I’d never even yelled on a track before I did ‘Crazy’, so when I recorded that, it’s a reflection of pure fearlessness. I was like, ‘Fuck that shit, I’m gonna go stupid.’ Now I’ve shown myself I can make a song called ‘Crazy’, I can do anything.”
When people don’t understand something, the knee-jerk reaction is to call it ‘crazy’, and that’s perhaps something that particularly gets angled at women – was that in your head at all?
“100%. I was thinking about and channelling everything that somebody might’ve made me feel crazy about. I realised that everything people made me feel crazy for doing or saying or wearing or whatever was the very thing that freed me, or propelled me. Then I was like, ‘Woah, I am fucking crazy. That’s why I’m here, and you’re still watching me, calling me crazy, you feel me?’”
What does the future look like for Doechii?
“This is my last month to finish my album, so I’m really tunnel vision on that. The album is in an interesting place right now: I’m in this space where I have great songs, and I could put an album out right now, but in my heart I don’t feel like it’s done yet. I’m still writing new music simultaneously, while tightening up the songs I already have. I’m putting a stop on it at the end of May. I’m like, ‘No, girl, whatever you have by the end of May, that’s the fucking album”.
I shall round off now. An artist and incredible human that is making steps and building her empire, I have only recently discovered the music of Doechii. She is a titanic talent and someone who is going to go incredibly far. Do make sure that you go and follow the Florida-born sensation. There is little doubt in my mind that Doechii is primed for…
WORLDWIDE success.
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