Doechii is Taking the World by Storm, & I Have Fallen Over
While the powerful pop trio of 2024, Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan, swept the stage at the 2025 Grammy Awards, reinvigorating pop music for a new generation of young people, it wasn’t the only category to see groundbreaking change from a new artist. Doechii, only the third woman in history to receive a Grammy for Best Rap Album, has not only redefined rap as a genre, but has solidified her place as an influential woman in the music industry.
In August of 2024, Doechii released her third mixtape as an artist, Alligator Bites Never Heal. The album is crafted beautifully. Showcasing Doechii’s intense honesty and vulnerability in her lyrics, to her unmatched flow and cadence throughout each song, she shows us a diverse range of style, emotion, and tone within one project that brings the pieces together like a puzzle. The different perspectives she offers, from her bright, unapologetic confidence on “Catfish”, to her uncertainty and fear of growing up on “Bloom”, preaches the very thing a lot of people are afraid to accept in today’s world: no one has it all figured out.
As Doechii shows us, you can be a Grammy-award winning artist, a young artist at that, and still feel like you're falling behind, still feel like you’re not enough, and still feel like you could be doing more. These feelings of inadequacy are not always based in truth, and Doechii shows us that no matter how successful one may look, we are all susceptible to believing we are not good enough, or we’re not doing enough, or the one million other things we tell ourselves to convince us that we could be more than what we currently are. Doechii interweaves these feelings of inadequacy with feelings of extreme self-confidence, love, and at times, delusion. The mixtape brings together all of these vulnerabilities to show us what truly makes up a person, not just a successful one, but someone who wants to grow, learn, laugh, cry, and experience every tumultuous emotion that exists in life. For Doechii, this is what the experience of living is all about, and she is not shying away from it in her art.
While Doechii’s fame has risen substantially since a few of her songs on Alligator Bites Never Heal went viral on social media, it was her Grammy performance that finally caught people’s attention. Doechii is not only deeply creative when it comes to her music; she wants her performances to speak to an audience, to bring something to life, to make a statement, and that is something she has been doing in every single one of her performances, including the Grammys.
From her first performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Doechii stunned audiences with intricate choreography and insane stage presence. Choreographed completely herself, Doechii took inspiration from the history of hip hop, wanting to express the deep connection she felt to other black women in the genre, some who have paved the way for Doechii herself. She did this by creating a performance, not just a live performance of her song, but a true story in itself. She, and two other dancers made to look like clones of her, were all connected through their hair. The long braids that seemed to belong to Doechii continued to the two girls, representing how deeply intertwined they are, beyond their physical ties.
Doechii not only has a powerful eye when it comes to her music, but has shown that she is creatively innovative, never wanting to do the simplest thing. During her striking 2025 Grammy’s performance, Doechii made it so that you could not take your eyes off of her. Choreographed by Robbie Blue, Doechii came to him with ideas in mind. Initially, she wanted the entire stage to be moving, and introduced the performance as such to Blue. Something that would have been insanely difficult, they both dove into head first. After hearing the Grammy’s could not make this happen (safety hazard… boring), Doechii and Blue settled on a moving conveyor belt, making Doechii’s performance one that was fluid and captivating, keeping you wondering what she was going to do next.
Again, choreographed with an ensemble of “clones”, Doechii played into the idea that the rap universe and black women alike have shaped who she is today. Receiving a standing ovation from some of the biggest legends (JayZ, Billie Eilish, SZA), Doechii not only captivated the world, she captivated those who thought they had already seen the best of the best. After hitting every mark, being held in a center split (for an impressively long amount of time), and walking up a staircase made of her dancers, Doechii showed the world the lengths she is willing to go to be the best of the best, creating the most powerfully moving and innovative art that she can.
After shedding a few tears, both during her acceptance speech and performance, I know I am not the only one who is now completely taken by Doechii. Only 26 years old, she is a bold, confident, unapologetic woman and performer who is determined to continue to share her insane talent, rhythm, and vision with the world. I see this performance and I see a woman I can look up to, a woman I’m inspired by, and a woman who reminds me that there is nothing more important than who I am and who I want to be. Isn’t that what art is all about?