From Tiny Desk to the Grammys: Doechii’s rise from anonymity to rap royalty

Perhaps for some it was Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso who were to blame. For others it was Chappell Roan, Sheer Mag, or the fact that Spanish artists like María José Llergo or Silvia Pérez Cruz (and a little earlier C. Tangana) started to perform there. What is clear is that in recent months, many people have started to pay close attention to what happens at Tiny Desk concerts, on American public radio, in order to try to open some crack in its musical algorithm.

The format, which was born in search of simplicity and authenticity in music, has recently been experiencing a clear resurgence thanks to some artists who are doing the opposite: complicating and perverting that original simplicity, turning their performances into little sound and visual gems.

That’s where we were at the beginning of December last year when the brains of the growing group of Tiny Desk followers experienced a small shock thanks to the performance of an artist who, with an outfit by designer Willy Chavarría, nails of an impossible length and a kind of adhesive tape on both sides of her face, seemed to be testing the sound on her microphone: “Boom bap, rap, rap, rappity-rap-rap, rappity-rap, pfff, boom bap-bap-bap-bap.”

In fact, it was Doechii performing the first bars of her song BOOM BAP, in which the artist displayed her cards with total sincerity. In the verses of the song she made clear what she was there for, and what she had come to fight: the discrimination that women continue to suffer in the rap industry (“They want real rap from a bitch like they out-rappin’ a bitch”), the fact that physical appearance continues to be the most important thing (“That ass a magnet, I get it, you know, attractive and shit”) and that to get to where she has, nobody gives anything away (“I gave my soul to this shit. Ate lumps of coal for this shit”).

The scant 24 minutes of her performance on NPR were enough to make her known in Spain, as confirmed by data from Google Trends. In the week in which her Tiny Desk was released, her name started to come up in searches and now, after she won the Grammy for best rap album, these queries are reaching their highest figures.

But Doechii has been a global star for some time now: her songs have gone viral on TikTok several times, she signed a contract with Top Dawg Entertainment a while ago — Kendrick Lamar’s former home and SZA’s current label, for whom Doechii opened on her 2021 tour. She has also been on Jimmy Fallon, where she gave a memorable performance, has walked the catwalk for Balenciaga and released three mixtapes, the latest of which, Alligator Bites Never Heal, earned her the Grammy.

‘Yucky Blucky Fruitcake’

The story of Doechii, whose real name is Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon, begins in Tampa, Florida, where she was born in August 1998 to a single-parent, all-female family consisting of her mother and her two twin sisters. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, her biological father is also a musician performing under the name SnatchaDaBoss.

From a very young age, her mother encouraged her to participate in extracurricular activities related to the performing arts: she was a cheerleader, a dancer, and sang in a choir. When it came time to go to high school, Jaylah insisted on attending one focused on the arts outside her school district, the best in the area, where, although she was not eligible, she was eventually admitted due to her incredible vocal abilities.

There, she received a solid academic education, and when she graduated she planned to dedicate herself professionally to singing in choirs or becoming a singing teacher. But then she realized that new technologies had made it much easier to develop a musical career as an independent artist and she got to work: composing her own songs, creating content for social networks, and singing wherever she could. Little by little, she built up a small fan base on SoundCloud and YouTube.

“I was working every aspect of my business at that time,” she explained in an interview with DIY magazine. “Making my own content, marketing, filming myself, taking pictures, styling myself, writing the music, shooting the videos. I did everything myself. A one-woman situation.”

Soon, the ambition of her project proved too great for the stifling atmosphere of Tampa and in 2019 she moved to New York to try her luck. There, she was forced to combine her musical career with a job as a student advisor at a medical school, but mixing music and work was not always easy.

When the pandemic hit, Doechii decided it was time to quit her job and get serious about music, turning her unemployment benefits into a kind of living allowance while she recorded her debut mixtape Oh The Places You’ll Go, which was released in November 2020.

A few months later, in April of the following year, one of the EP’s tracks, Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, exploded on TikTok, suddenly bringing her out of anonymity. The song is an autobiographical account where she reviews her childhood, her insecurities, and her personal evolution with a sarcastic and playful tone. That constant duality between vulnerability and strength is one of the keys that has characterized her music from the beginning. A way of telling her story and at the same time connecting with her audience.

Soon, her music, a mix of 1990s hip hop and more current themes, reached the ears of several record label heads who became interested in signing her. Eventually, Doechii became the first female rapper to sign with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), a record label founded in 2004 by Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith in Carson, California, known for being home to some of the most influential names in hip hop and R&B, including Kendrick Lamar, SZA, ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul.

‘Alligator bites never heal’

After signing with TDE, Doechii spent the next few years cementing her name in the industry with singles like What It Is (Block Boy), festival performances, and collaborations with top artists like Tyler, The Creator, Katy Perry, SZA, Janelle Monáe and Beyoncé, racking up millions of streams and captivating critics and a growing audience.

However, everyone seemed to be waiting for her debut album. An LP that she herself had been talking about since 2022. Finally, in the summer of 2024, Doechii released Alligator Bites Never Heal, an eclectic and diverse record that was adored by fans and critics alike.

For example, Lily Goldberg from Pitchfork magazine gave her a score of seven out of 10, highlighting that Alligator Bites Never Heal is “a formidable full-length debut, fluid yet focused, that reprises her playful and melodic sides without skimping on hard-hitting hip-hop.” The Grammy only confirms her as one of the most innovative and interesting voices in current music.

If that weren’t enough, and perhaps due to her concern with having everything under her control from the beginning, the artist also pays a lot of attention to her style. In fact, in 2023 she was included in the list of “Celebrities to follow” issued by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Following this inclusion, Doechii stated in Interview magazine that she would like to be like Rihanna in the future, in the sense that the Bahamian’s style has been almost as influential as her music.

Sam Woolf, the stylist who has been working with her for about two years, told The New York Times: “When Doechii tries on a dress, she likes to look at herself and ask herself a series of questions like: ‘Who is this girl?’ ‘Where is she going?’ ‘What is she doing?’ She’s all about telling a story.”

But aside from her style, one of the things that is most striking about Doechii’s appearance is her use of face tape, a common element in drag makeup to lift and define facial features, but which is usually hidden under a wig. She wears it in plain sight, and as Woolf explained in the same New York Times article, it fits into the artist’s plan to “expose what is supposed to be hidden, to show what should not be shown.”

As expected, Doechii collected her Grammy with the face tape, but she also took the opportunity to — in addition to stating that only three women have won the award (the much-missed Lauryn Hill, Cardi B and now her) — talk about everything it cost her to get there and send a message to everyone watching: “I know there is some Black girl out there, so many Black women out there, who are watching me right now, and I wanna tell you, you can do it. Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you that 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.” And, in all likelihood, she will be for a long time.

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