The rapper Doechiii has been slowly on the rise for a few years now, but things exploded for the artist this week.
For many the ambitious music video for ‘Crazy’ in 2022 was our first intro to the world of Doechii, aka Swamp Princess.
In August, Doechii released the mixtape/album Alligator Bites Never Heal through Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol. In October, Doecgii featured on a track called ‘Balloons’ on Chromakopia, Tyler, The Creator’s newest album.
Doechii was nominated for four Grammys for the mixtape including Best New Artist, and this week, the Florida rapper performed live for two institutions of media: a Tiny Desk concert and a performance on Colbert.
First, the performance on Colbert of ‘Denial is a River’ / ‘Boiled Peanuts’ features Doechii and two dancers with braids connected to each other creatively and performing theatrically with choreography that Doechii conceived herself, and said on X that the performance was inspired by the lineage of hip-hop and shouts out MF DOOM and Solange as references.
“I felt heavily inspired by the lineage of Hip Hop and how it contributes to who I am today. This is my first self choreographed performance and one of the most important things I wanted to highlight was my connection to black women through Hip Hop. With the help of hair artist Malcom Marquez, we were able to make this symbolic art performance come to life in just a short week.”
Then, the Tiny Desk concert, which debuted hours after, is one of the best we’ve ever seen in the series long history, as Doechii leads an all woman band in a masterclass of jazzy rock boom bap hip-hop over 24 minutes with such poise and intent, I was floored watching it twice.
It’s incredible, and echoing the lineage of hip-hop she mentioned for Colbert, I can hear references to Digable Planets, Slick Rick, Busta Rhymes, MOP in the set that heavily draws from Alligator Bites Never Heal.
Set List
“Boom Bap”
“Boiled Peanuts”
“Denial Is A River”
“Catfish”
“Nissan Altima”
“Bullfrog”
“Hide N Seek”
“Black Girl Memoir”
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
