Doechii is Everything
no content warnings today :-)
Today I present an appreciation post for the musical artist, Doechii. Here are some things we have in common:
She’s a weird girl, self-proclaimed.
She’s a Floridian. She’s from Tampa.
She has A cups — “alligator bites” as she calls them.
She’s bisexual, in the sense that she talks about the ways men have romantically embarrassed her and loves to eat pussy? God she just gets it.
I’m going to break down three of my favorite songs as well as my personal favorite lyrics and bars. Prefacing this with the reminder, as if it needs mentioning, that I’m the furthest thing from a rap expert: I am a 29-year-old white person who grew up in the South Tampa suburbs. I give full permission to take my insights with a grain or even a barrel of salt if you’d like! And last thing before I get started — feel free to listen along, or listen to the song and then read my lil’ blurb, but I really really recommend giving Doechii’s music a stream or two (million). She deserves it, and my words couldn't possibly do her songs justice.
“Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” from Oh the Places You’ll Go (2020)
Yeah, okay, the theatre kid in me is doing backflips listening to this one. I love the faux “introducing yourself to the class” vibes that create the overarching narrative of the song, I love the different voices all done by Doechii, and then that beat switch-up around 2 minutes in??? She’s got me singing to myself “You forgot to take the chicken out” all day — this song is irreverent, funny, sexy, and we get a Junie B. Jones reference in the name of the song (and a shout-out in the lyrics after the beat switch-up). Doechii talks more about being a weird, bisexual, dancer-girl, watching the Narnia movies, winning academic medals, and kissing gamer boys — and I kind of feel like she and I are just talking about our shared lives at this point. Then she starts to ramp up the intensity a bit, less autobiographical and more leaning into rap’s version of kayfabe, and she hits my favorite lyrics of the whole song:
“If I was the man your mom fucked
I’d fuck her right in your face
And take you and your siblings on a Domino’s Pizza date”
So just asking for a friend, can my sexuality be “being the man your mom fucked right in your face and then took you and your siblings out on a Domino’s Pizza date”? I’m moved emotionally by this verse, spiritually even.
Doechii returns to autobiography (Paramore mentioned!!! You are — the only exceptionnnn) and ends this jam returning to the dramatic conceit of the song: she’s introducing herself to her class in middle or high school, so everything she’s shared has been, well, highly inappropriate. Perfect, no notes. This is the ideal introduction to her as an artist, lyricist, and performer. Let’s jump ahead four years to a single she released to tease us before her most recent album—
“NISSAN ALTIMA” from the single of the same title, and on the album Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024)
Just a straight-up fun banger, folks. I get all the lyrics wrong for the chorus every time but it’s SO fun to say “get fucked, get fucked, get your tits sucked, get fucked up for the mother fucking princess” over and over again like lipsyncing “watermelon” to convince your choir teacher you know the lyrics (sorry, Mr. Redei). Here are the actual lyrics that have just the tastiest diction you could dream up:
“Wake up, A-cup, get your tits sucked
In my makeup, face-fuck, get your bake up
Fake bluff, fake tough, ****** dick suck
Put your sticks up for the motherfuckin' princess
Rates up, jig's up, put your dicks up
Get your dicks sucked, put your motherfuckin' sticks up
They suck, that's tough, *****, pay up
Get your rates up for the motherfuckin' princess”
Other important lyrics include “take a trip out of Japan, and I tsunami her vagina” as well as “I’m a real bi bitch, every coast, ho.” She’s bisexual, bicoastal - what else could you want?? We get more allusions to giving up on men for women, eating pussy, voodoo. She’s the “hip-hop Madonna”, “the trap Grace Jones”, she’s most definitely Carrie Bradshaw in a back brace because of how she’s carrying fashion in the music industry right now — all at this break-neck pace that I can hardly believe she can breathe through, but somehow she does. I may or may not have listened to this song on repeat all the way to work AND all the way back one day… the song is really listenable idk don’t judge until you try it!! Go listen to this song a few times, especially her Tiny Desk performance where she does the song EVEN FASTER, and then come back so we can cover the last song for today’s Substack post.
“DENIAL IS A RIVER” from Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024)
This song is Doechii’s arrival, ya’ll! If “Yucky Blucky” was when you met this girl in class in middle/high school and thought “wow, she’s just like me fr,” this song is a few years later when you’re reconnecting post-college, and remembering why you liked her so much. In this one, we get more of the playful conversation and dramatics that have become Doechii’s signature style. She’s honest, and proves the “to a fault” part wrong — why pretend like things are going smoothly?? On social media, we might see people we went to school with doing “super well.” In Doechii’s case, she’s been dropping songs, making TikToks and money, but her boyfriend turned out to be DL and things are not going as well as they may seem when we get to this exchange:
“Honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more
This is a really dark time for me
I'm goin' through a lot
By a lot, you mean drugs?
Um, I wouldn't—
Drugs?”
We all collectively giggle at Doechii’s attempt to cope in the following lyrics: “It’s a natural plant!!!!!” But still, she’s being so real — Doechii is letting us in on the cognitive dissonance that one experiences in trying to sum-up “how things are going lately?” realistically. We all have some highs over the past few years that we feel we should share with people, but then reality will come crashing back in — shit’s been tough lately too, hasn’t it? Even with all the musical success she’s had, under the surface is bubbling this seething insecurity, fed by her mistreatment from ex-boyfriends and maybe the Hollywood industry/world itself. This next portion is best enjoyed live, despite the silly removal of curse words for television broadcast. So let’s watch a portion of her performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which she completely choreographed herself (starts at Verse 3, and go ahead and watch through to the end):
“I mean fuck, I like pills, I like drugs
I like gettin' money, I like strippers, I like to fuck
I like day-drinkin' and day parties and Hollywood
I like doin' Hollywood shit, snort it, probably would
What can I say? The shit works, it feels good
And my self-worth's at an all time low
And just when it couldn't get worse
My ex crashed my place and destroyed all I owned
Whoopsie, made a oopsie
One-hundred thousand dollar "oops" made me loopy
I ain't a killer but don't push me
Don't wanna have to turn a ***** guts into soup beans”
I don’t know how much more real we can get here — she loves the partying and drugs and sex and “Hollywood” lifestyle, and she probably loves it because her self-esteem has been torpedoed. It’s refreshingly honest while still being so playful in tone, tricking you into bouncing along while she explains the crux of how people can fall into addictive behaviors. She’s keeping it playful and light even as we find out her ex should probably have a restraining order against him; the wordplay and tonal up-inflections on “whoopsie” “oopsie” and “loopy” feel like her attempt to stifle her anger over the $100k damage done by her ex (reminds me of how you speak to a child when they fall to keep them calm: “whOOPsie!”). But it quickly slips out, and I’ll neverrrrr get over her delivery of “soup beans,” growled through bared teeth. More women threatening men with vicious violence, please, it’s really actually very cool and slay and in for 2025, so I’ve heard.
In the recorded version for her album, her conversation partner then encourages her to take a moment and try a breathing exercise rather than slip into her seething anger further (I’d say it leaves me out of breath more than it helps me catch it, which may be the point lol). But in the Late Show performance, a short audio clip is played that I’ve tried to transcribe here:
“You know, we’re dealing with music so, it don’t matter what I look like, you know, it don’t matter what the artist look like. It’s about what the artist sound like, so that’s [part of?] your business to build against trying to sell a product that’s a human being, you know what I mean? It’s more the sound”
I’ve Google searched the quote with no success in finding out who it is that’s speaking, but ultimately no matter who’s being clipped there, its inclusion makes sense when we go back to the themes of industry success with seething, unresolved insecurity. The quote feels like a mantra to calm herself — it shouldn’t matter in the end what she looks like, what these ex-boyfriends or Hollywood think of her. What matters is whether her music sounds good or not, plain and simple, and she shouldn’t need to commodify and sell her humanity to be successful when her music is enough. Now we can do the “breathing” exercise with Doechii, which turns into this build-up of tension in the Late Show clip, released with the final “Woosah!” and choreographed moment of unity between Doechii and her dancers.
I could go on. And on. And on. But you know what’s better than reading about how much I like her music? Experiencing it yourself — so here are a few other truly honorable mentions that you should listen to asap:
“CATFISH” on Alligator Bites Never Heal (the end of “DENIAL IS A RIVER” leads soooo perfectly into this song!! Go listen and you’ll understand what I mean)
“Black Girl Memoir” on Oh the Places You’ll Go
“Balloon (feat. Doechii)” on Tyler the Creator’s newest album, CHROMAKOPIA
“BOOM BAP” on Alligator Bites Never Heal, which has the lyric that inspired the title of this post. Doechii, in both the recorded and live performances of this song, builds up to this moment of ecstasy in praising her artistry — she’s listing everything she captures in her music: “real” and “rap,” “house” and “trap.”
“It’s everything! I’m everything!” Yeah, pretty much.