How do you shift rap to more progressive tracks while not abandoning your roots? Ask Doechia - an artist who doesn't have to pretend to be a sexbomba or a gangster to reach the top and will perform in July in Gdynia. Her secret weapon? Disarming listeners with unpretentious sensitivity and fresh wit.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
"I like pixies, I like drugs, I like money, I like strippers, I like getting fucked, I like daytime drinking, daytime parties, and Hollywood. I like to do Hollywood-style shit. Dash?
I would probably snort. What can I say? That shit works, makes me feel good," raps Doechii in the track Denial Is A River..
These few verses might suggest that we're dealing with yet another star who, according to the rules of the genre in its most commercialized version, must convince listeners that he leads a lifestyle based on doing drugs, getting laid and spending high. One that they can at best aspire to.
But don't be so easily fooled or discouraged. Hailing from Tampa, California (hence her other nickname, "swamp princess"), the 26-year-old is by all accounts a hoot that Young Leosia can only dream of. Her consistently wearable recent clothes from Gucci by no means indicate that she's been dabbling in poverty. The above excerpt, however, ends with a sentence that knocks the teeth out of the classically ruthless and high-slung mouth of mainstream rap.
"And my self-esteem is at its lowest," he says. - confesses the self-reflective and self-therapeutic Doechii, who some time ago finished with stimulants. Among other things, she credits her sobriety with winning a Grammy award for Alligator Bites Never Heal - the best rap album of the past 2024. Or at least that's what she said when receiving the statuette, which has only been won twice by women - Lauryn Hill and Cardi B - in this category created almost 30 years ago.
It was the author of the hit Bodak Yellow who announced the historic verdict of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in a way handing over her crown of rap queen to her younger colleague. However, we can be sure that there is room on the scene for many talented and uncompromising female artists, who, after all, as Aaron Williams reminds us in Upprox, "have always rapped - and if you think otherwise, you just haven't been listening."
Doechii, with her overly discouraged newcomer persistence, carves out more space for a number of like-minded, empowering great female rappers (Lola Brooke, Megan Thee Stallion, Rapsody, Doja Cat, Tierra Whack). She dedicated her speech at the high-profile, as it was dominated by (not only heterosexual) female winners of the 67th Grammy Awards to the next generation of potential female artists, i.e. every black girl watching.
"I want to tell you that you can do it. Anything is possible. Don't let anyone impose stereotypes on you that tell you that you can't be here, that you're too dark skin tone, that you're not smart enough, too dramatic or too loud. You are exactly what you need to be to be exactly where you are," - she said.
Of course, one can argue that the "sky is the limit" style rhetoric smacks of neoliberal falsehood. But if you consider the frequency with which black women's wings have been clipped since childhood, this message already sounds a bit different.
Nor is it an empty declaration. Doechii, during her powerful performances whether she happens to be performing at a gala, a concert, on NPR's Tiny Desk radio show or one of the many late shows by white dudes, is proud of her culture. She doesn't allow her identity to be taken away from her, shamed in the case of black people because of her hair or complexion, which white showbiz forces one by one to cover up with wigs or lighten.
Probably now the eyes of some of you will turn to Beyonce. Freshly honored with a Grammy for Best Album of the Year, the singer is bravely reclaiming country music for black Americans, but at the same time she is sometimes accused of trying to visually resemble natural blondes. How much racism and how much truth in this is probably impossible to determine.
One thing is certain - Doechii is on the team of those female vocalists who simply say "fuck off" to similar comments, because it's nobody's business how female artists or women in general carry themselves. In doing so, she proves that girls and queers (she herself speaks openly about her bisexuality and defends the bisexuality of men, which is particularly vulnerable to discrimination also within the LGBTQ+ community), not without difficulty, but increasingly confidently enter the world of music hitherto rewarding mainly two (as it happens, gender-divided) types of person: exalted, often over-the-top tough guys and humiliated sexbombs.
Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon - for this is Doechii's real name - breaks out of these patterns, and does not obsessively stick to one intricately constructed image. At the same time, she doesn't feel superior to others. She doesn't hustle - as is often the case with successful women in environments stereotypically considered male or actually dominated by men - pick me girl. In blunt verses that show she can laugh at herself, she indicates how difficult a battle she is fighting against the demands of the entertainment industry and record labels.
At the same time, she admits that she has a lot of worries about it, taking from the imposter syndrome and all the circumstances of potential, or rather, already achieved success. Perhaps she should be called a rap belle, like Charlie XCX in pop? After all, the Briton, also a Grammy award-winner, on last year's acclaimed album brat had very similar blunders about her incompatibility with the demands of her surroundings and her inability to lock herself into a single drawer.
Doechii spins a similar tale, which doesn't prove its derivativeness, but can be read as a sign that it's finally possible to openly own the contradictions of being a girl. In doing so, she maintains an image consistency and a claw to change the rules of the showbiz game.
That's why on Alligator... the brave, naked vulnerability continually evolves and shrinks toward a brazenness expressed, for example, in a line from Stank Pooh: "I'm peeing on you whores, dead or alive."
Doechii's obedience to established paths is also refused within rap itself, emphasizing - as in a literal reference to the golden days of hip-hop on the American East Coast Boom Bap - that "he's all things to all people," and therefore unafraid to mix styles. With a track record of R&B and pop hits and collaborations like the one with Katy Perry, in his new award-winning album Alligator Bites Never Heal he on the one hand pays homage to rap's underpinnings in a very raw, "real" atmosphere (it's surprising that such an album sits even with casual tourists in these parts), but also doesn't shy away from experimenting with house, jazz or punk. However, who would pastor the genre purity of music in 2025?
As it happens, there is no shortage of critics (the self-proclaimed ones, not those writing mostly flattering reviews in this case) who check how much real (i.e. actually what kind of rap?) there is in Doechia's rap. There are also those who use her success as a great opportunity to pit women against each other as part of the typical mansplaining (which is why I'm not at all happy that Taylor Swift came out of this year's Grammy Awards gala with nothing).
In online disputes about Alligator... I read that "this is what women's rap should sound like," not (and here insert another female artist who does not meet personal, mostly male and impossible criteria). I can't hide the fact that I'm very pleased with these cracking seats of music experts, because they only prove that Doechii has done an excellent job. If she doesn't encourage you to explore black music with her sincerity and strength in her pen and lungs, I don't know if anything else will. Polish lucky ones or skeptics will be able to form an opinion soon. A few days ago it was announced that Doechii will perform in Gdynia in June.
