Self-proclaimed “ Swamp Princess » (“marsh princess”) due to her Florida origins, she is preparing to reign over the rap game ! American rapper Doechii is, as Kendrick Lamar greeted him in October in an Instagram story, “ the hardest out », a phrase which can be translated as “the strongest rapper (and project) of the moment”.
The most nominated female rap artist at the Grammy Awards, the 67th ceremony of which will be held on February 2 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the singer is in the running, at only 26 years old, for four awards: the title of best new artist , best rap album for his mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal (Alligator bites never heal), best rap collaboration for his single Nissan Altima and best remix for Kaytranada’s version ofAlter Ego. A look back at the meteoric rise of the future hip-hop superstar.
“Be who I wanted to be”
“One day I’m going to die and the only person in the coffin is me. So I should have been who I wanted to be and said what I wanted to say,” she confides to Vulture in 2022. A real breath of fresh air on the old-fashioned boom bap, Doechii can do it all. She raps, sings, dances and shakes up performances with an impactful visual posture.
With a strong temperament, Doechii devotes herself to the great game of diss song with mastery, as a worthy heir to her models, the rappers Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj. This virtuoso chameleon distils sharp punchlines, hilarious parodic egotrips or vindictive rhymes in just about every style. The artist thus flirts with punk on Pacermarries the house with Alter Egoembraces pop with Yucky Blucky Fruitcakekiss the soul with Black girl memoir and dredges up R&B with What It Is (Block Boy).
“I have a big mouth and I come from the South”
“I have a big mouth and I come from the South,” says the woman who was born on August 14, 1998 in Tempa, Florida under the name Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon. At 11 years old, shy and victim of bullying, she invents her alter ego in her diary: “I am Doechii. It literally came to me like that,” explains the artist.
A bad bitch cheeky girl who probably won’t let alligators bite her. “Jaylah might be being bullied, but I decided Doechii wouldn’t put up with that shit. My attitude was completely different. It stuck with me,” she continues.
“A deep connection with the roots of hip-hop”
Dance, choir, theater, tap dancing or even cheerleading, the teenager, encouraged by her mother, does everything. She set her sights on the Howard W. Blake School of the Arts where she began to rap: “I didn’t know how to read Music yet, but they accepted me because I had a powerful voice”, says she remembers.
“From the beginning, I felt a deep connection to the roots of hip-hop and the intellectuals who built that legacy. Music has always been a way for me to tell my story. A way to talk about everything I’ve been through and learned, through the eyes of a black woman […] For me, hip-hop is the most powerful way to tell your story, especially the ones that aren’t immediately heard or understood,” she said when accepting the Disruptor of The Year award at Variety Hitmakers Brunch.
“TikTok rapper, part-time YouTube actress”
One of her best friends suggested the idea of producing and publishing her own music online without a label. In 2015, while still in high school, she shared her first songs on SoundCloud under the pseudonym “Iamdoechii”. In 2020, she unveiled her first EP, Oh The Places You’ll Go. In 2021, she breaks TikTok with her song Yucky Blucky Fruitcake where she discusses her bisexuality: “I think I like girls, but I think I like men/Doechii is an idiot, I never fit in.” »
On YouTube, she launched her Swamp Sessions, a series in which she sets herself a time limit of one hour to write a song. His viral hit, the house anthem Persuasive in 2022, attracting the attention of critics and labels. She signs in 2022 with the prestigious label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), which counts Kendrick Lamar and SZA in its ranks, marks Doechii.
“And if I died today, I would die a bastard.” TikTok rapper, part-time YouTube actress,” she quips in Pause Poohthe opening song of his mixtape of 19 tracks as funny as they are introspective Alligator Bites Never Heal.
-In 2023, she confirms her status as a phenomenon with the single What It Is (Block Boy)notably marked by a strong performance at the 2023 BET Awards and received the Rising Star Award at the 2023 Billboard Women in Music ceremony.
“Let’s give them a man with chocolate bars and a mustache”
Beyond the music, Doecchi takes care of his avant-garde look and delivers meaningful visual performances. On the front page of the magazine Paper, she embodies a new alter ego, a man, called “Ricardo”. “Since they keep saying I look like a man, let’s give them a man with chocolate bars and a mustache,” she comments.
During her concert at the Alhambra in Paris in October 2024, with the Vivienne Westwood ensemble, she burned a sage stick and invited her fans to chant mantras at the end of her concert.
Across the Atlantic, each of his filmed performances is noticed. During his passage to Late Show by Stephen Colbert on December 5, 2024, she performs connected with two dancers by braids, all in Gucci monogram uniforms. A symbolic unity that hair artist Malcolm Marquez describes as “the power to connect us to ourselves, but also to each other. »
Between jazz and boom bap, she concludes her NPR Tiny Desk Concert on December 6, surrounded by an orchestra composed exclusively of black women, with her anthem to Black Girl Memoir, a title dedicated to all black women.
In his music video Denial Is A Riverunveiled at the beginning of January, she pretends to be the heroine of a 1990s sitcom, very kitsch and stereotypical, with forced laughter in post-production…
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