Ever since joining the label Top Dawg Entertainment in March 2022, Doechii’s career has gone from strength to strength. As an artist, such recognition has given her the freedom to channel her childhood self—the one who created the name “Doechii” at 11 years old as an escape from bullying—into a fully realized creative force. Her debut album, Alligator Bites Never Heal, is a testament to this journey, earning critical and cultural acclaim for its raw vulnerability and boundary-pushing artistry.
Her journey with sobriety has run parallel with the album release and has been a hot topic in interviews and across the fan base. Doechii herself sees the lifestyle shift as fuelling the creativity and vulnerability behind the album. In an interview with Gay Times she stated that this “project is not coming from a party environment, it’s coming from me sitting down barefoot in my studio, balling my eyes out.” Fans have clearly connected with the unpolished and truthful version of herself.
So, what does this mean for the evolution of Doechii musically and personally? For Doechii, sobriety was never going to mean boring. If anything, it has allowed for more experimentation with different characters and elements of herself. Take “Denial is a River” as an example, one of the standout tracks from the album. She creates a therapy style back and forth between herself and a fictional character, blending the personal and the public. Or take Ricardo, a moustachioed eight-packed Panamanian bisexual drag persona who featured in Paper Magazine. A special mention for The Swamp Princess, created to claim her Floridian roots and explore that aspect of her identity. Doechii asserts, “I’m claiming the swamp as mine”. It seems then that any facet of Doechii’s life is something to be weaved into her music in theatrical and exciting ways.
Musically, sobriety doesn’t seem like something that is going to slow down the rise of Doechii. The negative impacts of substances have always been in the content of her music. “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” from her 2020 EP Oh The Places You’ll Go being a good example of this – “weed makes me anxious” repeats through the song. Doechii also seems to fit into a trend of rappers who are being honest about going sober, joining company with artists like Kendrick Lamar, a former member of the TDE stable – on his 2022 track “Mother| Sober”, he raps “You ain’t felt grief/Until you felt it sober.”
In an industry that glorifies the use of alcohol and other substances, Doechii refuses to be pushed around. From Doechii’s own point of view, sobriety has allowed her to challenge her own and explore new processes. She has even mentioned an interest in acting and dance as a way to explore her love of dark humour and satire. For now then, even with the lifestyle change, there seems to be nothing that could slow Doechii down.
Illustration by Melena Orleans