Doechii still gets scared. Sitting in her Los Angeles bedroom, with a gray hoodie on and her signature beaded cornrows, the 26-year-old is describing one of the last times nerves found her. She’d just been announced as the third woman in history to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album and she had not one bit of a speech prepared. Not because she didn’t believe she would win but because of a divine message she’d received. “Something in my spirit told me, You’ll know what to say when you get up there. Just trust me,” she recalls. “I think my speech was literally downloaded. It’s like my mouth was moving, but it wasn’t me speaking.”
Whatever power fed her those words made a proclamation that resonated with millions, that will be widely shared via Instagram quote cards and vision boards for years to come: “Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, to tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark or that you’re not smart enough or that you’re too dramatic or you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be to be right where you are, and I am a testimony right now.”
Doechii laughs easily, loudly, and with her entire body throughout our conversation, but she gets most animated while painting this awards-night picture: “I was so scared. And I get gassy when I’m scared. My stomach goes, ‘Oop!’” It’s a surprising revelation. Because while, yes, it makes sense to feel nervous preaching to a room full of the biggest stars on the planet and, yes, her highest-charting song is literally called “Anxiety,” it’s so clear that Doechii has been emotionally preparing for megastardom for years.
She wrote “Nosebleeds,” the victory song she released on Grammys night, long before she’d ever been nominated. In it, she states, “You’ll never live to see the day that Doechii loses.” Does that foresight not make someone immune to common stage fright? Listeners can sit with “Nosebleeds”—and Alligator Bites Never Heal, the mixtape that earned her Best Rap Album—as signs that being underestimated is a superpower. If anything, early dismissals might serve to underline the significance of your later wins. (The day after she won her Grammy, an old 2020 video she posted about getting fired from her retail job was nearly as circulated as her speech.)
In any case, it wasn’t the first time that higher power had been in touch. The same voice visited her as a child in Tampa, where she grew up the eldest daughter of three, born to a single mother who became pregnant with her at 18. It whispered to sixth grader Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon that her name was actually Doechii, to write it down: “I am Doechii.” And in doing so, it set the course for one of the most powerful cultural takeovers of the current decade.
I originally came across Doechii through the viral 2020 TikTok hit “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” (“Hi, my name’s Doechii with two i’s”). If that escaped your algorithm, you may have met her through the even more popular 2023 track “What It Is (Block Boy),” which was released after she was signed to Top Dawg Entertainment and Capitol Records. Make no mistake, Doechii had been brushing up against mainstream success for years. But in late 2024, something shifted.
I’ve seen people credit her mesmerizing self-choreographed Late Show With Stephen Colbert appearance for the change. Others say it was her downright cinematic Grammys performance—which she pulled off with bronchitis, mind you. Personally, I’d time it to the literal day after her NPR Tiny Desk Concert video was posted in December 2024. Artists across genres (Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Gracie Abrams) started singing her praises online en masse. A middle-aged Uber driver told me he was a huge fan of the single “NISSAN ALTIMA” when I put it on the aux. My mom started dropping inspirational Doechii quotes in our family group chat. The most basic girls from my hometown were popping up on my feed perkily lip-syncing “DENIAL IS A RIVER,” which details Doechii’s experience with a boyfriend who cheated on her with another man and destroyed all of her belongings. Now, she’s cleared 50 million monthly listeners on Spotify and gained millions more Instagram followers in 2025 alone. Doechii has become inescapable.
We’re speaking in the middle of yet another week she’s spent reaching new heights. One day, she’s named Billboard’s Woman of the Year. Then the world wakes up to videos of her onstage with Lauryn Hill, the first woman to win the Best Rap Album Grammy, at a festival performance in Miami. Then she’s in Valentino Haute Couture, Chloé, and Schiaparelli Paris Fashion Week looks, reposted to so many Instagram Stories that I could describe the earrings she wore with each outfit from memory. (In between those commitments, she innocently took to her own IG Stories to let Parisian fans know where they could find her for a quick meet-and-greet. The result was blocked-off streets and about 2,000 people fighting for the chance to catch a glimpse of her. Images from that day show her floating through a sea of humans, messiah-style.)
A common sentiment among her fan base—known as The Swamp, in homage to the Florida–inspired “swamp aesthetic” Doechii has woven into her image—is that each Doechii win feels uniquely personal. Her self-made journey is the type that’s easy to feel emotionally invested in. I, too, have bought into it with a bittersweet curiosity about what a mainstream artist like her would’ve meant to me at 12 years old. A dark-skinned woman who’s so confident, so uncompromising. One lauded by Hollywood legends and luxury fashion houses. Whose innate talent is celebrated by the music industry’s commercial powerhouses and fringe rap loyalists alike. It feels nearly impossible to reconcile this type of celebrity with the social constructs that demand little dark-skinned girls limit their beliefs, accommodate everyone else first, and cap their life’s expectations for the sake of peace and acceptance.
I ask Doechii what Doechii would’ve done for her as a kid, and she warms up, with an obvious affection for middle school Jaylah. “I was desperately seeking artists that looked like me and that thought like me,” she says. “There weren’t many. I needed it so badly that I was like, ‘If I can’t find this, I’m going to become this.’”
Of course, becoming an unprecedented type of celebrity isn’t easy. And it carries a responsibility that might make even the most self-assured, once-in-a-generation type of talent a bit nervous sometimes. Doechii is up for the challenge, she says, locking in without a hint of humor: “My inner child really needed this.”
I want to dig into your creative foundations. As a teenager, you sought out an art school?
I love talking about this because my experience in the fine arts really molded my work ethic and who I am as an artist today. There were early mornings, late days, training hard, and a lot of critique.1 I learned everything from singing to reading sheet music to how to write music. I did guitar, but that didn’t last very long because I couldn’t have long nails. I would sneak into musical theater classes with my other friends even though I wasn’t supposed to be there. I did poetry and I tried talent shows and I lost and then I’d get second place and then I’d get first place. It was four years of these highs and lows. I was experiencing a little taste of what was to come.
1. “She was very confident in being different,” says her high school music teacher Carmen Griffin. “I thought she was going to make it as a singer or in the fashion world. Whatever she got her hands on, she was gonna make shake.”
Your mom had you involved in a ton of hobbies early on, too—ballet, cheerleading, gymnastics.
She would always make me show up for myself even when I didn’t feel like it. Even when I lost interest in commitments, she still made me honor them. She also wouldn’t judge me when I wanted to try something else. She was very supportive of me pivoting, and now today, I can pivot. I owe that to her.
She had you fairly young. I’m someone who comes from a young mom as well and I find it interesting how that shows up for people in adulthood. How do you think growing up alongside her impacted you long-term?
Because of my upbringing, I was always listening to women’s conversations and how women felt about things. I had these glimpses into womanhood. My mom has three girls, and she was a single mom, so I’m very close with my sisters. My mom is such a girl’s girl. She’ll be out in public, and she’s going to put you onto her outfit, she’s going to help you with your lip gloss, she’s going to help you with your makeup in the bathroom. You can be a stranger. And I’m like that, too. I’m infatuated with women.
I always see you in a comments section showing love. You’re always paying it forward praise-wise.
If something truly inspires me or I see something that I like, I’m just going to be like, “You know, this is fire.” It’s not even a conscious effort—it’s just being a decent person.
How’s your family reacting to this career moment? Things like performing with Lauryn Hill can’t feel like par for the course.
They’re always keeping me grounded. Most of the time, I don’t talk about work with them. I was in the car with my family and my team, in a dress looking fab, and my sister chose that moment to ask if I farted. Like, number one, no I didn’t, and number two, why would you say that? Like, I’m a superstar. I don’t fart!2 I’m just Jaylah to them.
2. Unless she’s winning a Grammy.
Who do you let call you Jaylah? Is that something you protect?
Anybody who truly knows me calls me Jaylah, and I don’t even have to protect it. It’s like nobody who knows me calls me Doechii.
Over the years, you worked so many retail and restaurant jobs. Now, you oversee a full team. What did your experiences as an employee teach you about the type of boss you wanted to be?
The only thing I realized was that I didn’t like working for people. That’s it. I don’t like it. Because you’re the manager of Chipotle and I’m trying to lead a whole generation of people—I can’t take advice from you!
Did I read you had a student adviser gig at 18?
Oh my god, I had no business working that job. I was advising grown people in their 30s going to medical school! I was a horrible employee. I think I got it through straight confidence and lying on my résumé.
Recipe for success. I want to get into your YouTube vlogger era, because that account is such a special place for your fans. Some of your videos, like the series you did while completing The Artist’s Way,3 are super inspirational, while others are a bit unserious. Would you ever scrub your digital footprint?
No, I’m going to leave it. Like, some of the videos are super cringe, but I think it’s all important. I went through a period at 18 where, looking back now, I was running from doing music, but I was just trying to be creative in every other way that I possibly could. All along I knew it was music—I was just really scared. Some kid out there can watch those videos now to know, “When she was this age, she went through that, and it’s normal to feel that way.” That vulnerability can be super validating.
3. A 1992 self-help book for people who want to unlock their full creative potential. Doechii’s frequent references to it have inspired a new wave of people to pick it up.
That vulnerability is also such a key component of your music. “DENIAL IS A RIVER” redefined the heartbreak song and represents a post-relationship crash-out pretty accurately. How soon after a traumatizing romantic situation can you put pen to paper?
Sometimes I have to process things before I can talk about them, because if I try to do it immediately, I’m gonna say the wrong thing. But that song took me a year to process. I didn’t want to give my ex any promo in my music. And I talked about three different exes in that song. People think it’s just one! I decided I had to talk about it for me.
Have you ever been involved with a partner who’s creatively limited you?
I only felt that way once. I was 18, and I was dating a guy who just wasn’t very supportive of my music, and it really stifled me. I stopped writing because he was just like, “That’s not cool.” I took his opinion way too seriously when really he just didn’t get it. I remember listening to SZA’s Ctrl for the first time and it literally gave me the courage to break up with him. I only bring that up because she inspired me to be vulnerable through my music in a way that I didn’t think I could be.
It happens all the time. I’ll see so many of my friends with someone and I’m like...
He literally hates you.
Have you ever made a song to help people regain power after a relationship like that?
“GIRLS,” the first song I dropped that went viral, was 100 percent about that ex. I had been working on it for a year and I played it for him, and he was like, “This sucks. What are you even talking about?” And I was like, “Oh yeah, I got to fix this.” And the girls loved it because they felt me.
One man’s—I don’t want to say trash, but...
No, seriously! I think it boils down to: “You’re not a creative, so you don’t understand why this is important to me. And you don’t even love me enough to support me in something that you don’t understand because you’re selfish. And this is for women—this is not for you.”
Have you had any people you’ve written about reach out and say something?
If I’m writing about you in the negative, you can’t reach out—you’re blocked.
You have a girlfriend now. Is that relationship inspiring you creatively?
All of my relationships inspire my music because they make up my life experience. This is such a Leo thing to say, but my literal existence as a queer Black woman is a major contribution to the hip-hop genre. I’m speaking truthfully from a queer Black woman’s perspective, and being honest about my life through my lens is amazing. That perspective is being highlighted, and we need queer perspectives.
You always say that you’re a student of hip-hop. Nowadays, how are you informing it?
I still feel like a student, but I think people can learn from how I honor the genre’s traditions. If people are nerdy enough, they’ll observe a lot of double entendres, punch lines, clever wordplay, and poetic pictures on Alligator Bites Never Heal, especially on songs like “BOILED PEANUTS.” We have to honor that as rappers—without that part of the genre, we literally would not have anything that we have now
I’ve noticed that you’re often positioned as the “intellectual” alternative to other female rappers. How do you feel about that?
I wouldn’t agree with that perspective. I’ve seen people describe me as “the female that,” “she’s intellectual,” “she’s hard,” and “she’s scarin’ hos.” I think what’s happening is people are trying to understand who I am as an artist, but they’re doing it in comparison to other artists, which I don’t think is necessary to interpret art at all.
Maybe it’s how people approach topics when they don’t have a full understanding of them and can only use reference points.
Critiquing art and interpreting art is an art form as well. It’s a skill. People have jobs interpreting art, so it’s not something that is commonly practiced the right way. So I understand why people are doing it, but I don’t like to get too caught up in all of that, you know?
As your fame continues to grow, how do you feel about hopping online and clarifying situations? I saw you respond to accusations that you were lip-syncing during your Grammys performance.
Am I going to be constantly online responding? No, that’s not something I like to practice. But I do 100 percent believe that there are times and places to defend myself. If that happens to be through the internet, then maybe. But it’s not sustainable for me to constantly be going back and forth and reacting to people online. With the Grammys, I was halfway joking. Like, please don’t play with me. I don’t cheat. I don’t cut corners, and I take my performances really seriously. So I was clapping back a little bit.
How is this new level of fame impacting your one-to-one relationships? And how are you showing up for the people in your personal life now that you’re someone for so many people?
It’s interesting because something about the phrase “someone for so many people” doesn’t fully resonate with me. I feel like I’m just existing and being myself and people are observing me. I’m not showing up for them, you know? It’s a fan base I’ve always been close to that is just growing.
Your fan base has diversified quite significantly. I find that sometimes non-Black fans don’t fully grasp hip-hop’s significance and integrity, and as a fan, I feel protective. Is the importance of this genre something you’ll protect?
Where I am in my career and especially with my relationship with my fan base, I talk to them honestly about maintaining the culture and respect for hip-hop. You also have to have some level of respect for hip-hop to be fucking with my type of boom bap rap anyway. I’m hoping to maintain that with my fans from different backgrounds. Right now, it’s not a problem and it’s not one I’m hoping to have in the future.
What’s the next way in which you hope to make people a little uncomfortable?
On my next project, I plan on having conversations. They might be hard for some people to have, but I think I want to bring up a dialogue about topics that might be hard for people to hear.
Topics like?
I don’t want to give them away. But we’re going to have a conversation on the album.
Fair enough. Some of the ways you present yourself—like by wearing visible face tape on red carpets—shift people out of their comfort zones. Do you set out to do that?
With everything that I do in my life, I don’t have nobody in mind but me. I like to fuck things up because to me, it looks cooler that way. I gravitated toward the face tape because it’s supposed to be hidden and it’s not. I’m that type of person. I like to turn my shirts inside out. I like to wear my pants backward. My love for imperfection shows up in my beauty and fashion a lot.
So every Doechii look has lore. How has your fashion and your relationship with your stylist, Sam Woolf, evolved over the years?
When we first started working together in my early 20s, I said the goal was to be a fashion icon. I just didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to wear or who I was fashionably. We also couldn’t get pulls from big labels and designers. The style and the fashion have evolved as who I am as a woman has evolved. I just have a lot more clarity about what makes me feel comfortable and what represents me.4 I like to do a lot of research on these brands and their collections and see if the stories they’re telling align with mine. I can’t say what people are perceiving, but I can say the story that I’m telling through fashion is that “I’m everything.” I’ve said that in my music, but now I want to say it through fashion.
4. “She’ll never say, ‘I want to wear this specific thing,’” shares her stylist, Sam Woolf. “She’ll say, ‘This is what I want to portray.’ And sometimes that character is so specific. As an artist, she’s taught me to always challenge myself. Ask, ‘How much deeper can you go?’”
How else have you grown besides through fashion? In what ways do you no longer relate to the 2022 version of yourself who’d just been signed to a label?
I have learned to trust myself a lot more. Back then, I was very dependent on my label’s opinions of me and my music. And it was from an innocent place because I wanted to please them and I wanted them to be proud of me. Now I’m leading every step that I take, from the content to the marketing strategies to the way I show up in real life with my fans. These things are coming from my brain and my heart, and with my label, I delegate what I want them to do and they do what I tell them to do. That’s the difference—leadership and clarity and maturity.
You’ve made a lot of people proud this year. It’d be easier to list the famous people who haven’t cosigned you. Which shout-outs surprised you the most?
Kendrick Lamar’s and Beyoncé’s, but I don’t know if I would count hers as a cosign. She said she liked my music in one of her interviews…and then she had me open for her at a stop on the Renaissance Tour. And she sent me flowers recently.
That’s a cosign to me. I know you don’t like comparisons, but I think that you’re Beyoncé’s only true artistic daughter right now. In what ways do you relate to her as an artist?
Oh god, girl, don’t say that—they gon’ come for you! I relate to her efforts as a businesswoman and her leadership. She is the embodiment of an eloquent leader. I look up to the way that she handles her job, her fame, and her fans. She is the ultimate showgirl and professional artist.
Does the idea of being a role model to someone else excite you?
It’s a position that I do not take lightly. I say this to myself often in my journal entries, but I truly am becoming who I needed. I can only imagine all the little Black girls and boys out there that I represent something for. So it excites me, it inspires me, and it makes me very aware of what it is that I’m saying and how I’m presenting myself while also being mindful of who I am right now and what grown Jaylah needs.
Now that the demand for your music has increased, there are a lot more places for you to be. You made Alligator Bites Never Heal in a month in semi-isolation. What’s it been like creating your next—and first full-length—album all over the globe?
I don’t know how that’s working for me yet. We’ll see if I end up with an album! Everything in me wants to say, “Everybody, shut up—stop,” for literally three to six months to do all of this. But I have obligations. I’m trying to learn how to adjust my creative process for the season of life I’m in now.
What does your day-to-day look like in this season?
I finally perfected a routine that works everywhere I go because I travel a lot. I have it on my wall right now: I have to read for 30 minutes to an hour. That’s my goal, at least. I am very into my skincare, so that’s heavily a part of my routine. I stretch every day, and I jump rope a lot. I have to do something for my home and I have to do something for my career every day. It could be sending an email, or it could be washing the dishes. I’ve tried to start planning my meals. I’m not a good cook, but I try my best. This is all me preparing for turning 30 because by then, I want to be flawless. So I’m trying to adult right now.
Where do you see Jaylah 20 years from now? And what do you hope she maintains?
I hope I’m resting. I hope to be writing books or to have other creative facets that don’t generate money—doing things just to do them, not as a job. Hopefully, I’m wealthy enough to never have to work again. And I hope I maintain how I express myself. I never want to tense up or think, Because I’m this old, I can’t do this. No matter how old I get, I’m still twerking on the floor. I want to maintain that everybody else’s perceptions of what Jaylah can do or should do never affect what Jaylah wants to do.
Styled by Brandon Tan. Hair by Malcolm Marquez for Thank God It’s Natural. Makeup by Dee Carion at Paradis. Manicure by Rachel Sun. Set design by Michael Wanenmacher for Wanenmacher Studios. Production by The Morrison Group. Special thanks to Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. Shot on location at Swanky Time Capsule Estate.
Director of video: Kathryn Rice. Senior producer: Rae Medina. Producer: Phoebe Balson. Associate producer: Jordan Abt. Director of photography: Darren Kho. Cinematographer: Jake Mitchell. Sound: Matthew Leeb. Editors: Josh Archer and Sarah Ng.
