LOS ANGELES — A glass-walled truck motored its way into a strobing L.A. warehouse in April, careful to avoid the throngs of people who'd gathered for what they presumed to be a typical record release party. Behind that glass was a bare-chested young female rapper, sporting only silver body paint and thigh-high boots while flanked by a dozen women clad in nude bodysuits.
Doechii, 24, commanded the crowd's attention as she rapped the first verse from her woman-as-warrior single "Crazy" before strolling out of the truck and onto a stage alongside her ensemble. Toward the song's end, she sparred with a rod-wielding attacker whom she quickly dispatched, stealing the weapon and twirling it in the air before taking a menacing bow.
It was a thunderous introduction to Top Dawg Entertainment's newest aspiring star. But the plan had been to go even bigger.
"Originally, I had actually wanted to go either on the highway, or maybe Rodeo Drive or Hollywood somewhere, and perform in the glass truck in public," Doechii tells the L.A. Times a few months later. "But we couldn't get the permit approved in time. They were like, 'It's kids.'"
Doechii is slumped onto a couch at NeueHouse Hollywood, a workspace temporarily co-opted by Capitol Records while its legendary tower undergoes renovations. Now wearing a casual tank top and sweatpants, she winces when asked about that night, despite the sparkling reception she received for her performance.
"I look back on that, and it was like, 'Oh my God, that was so extra,'" she said. "It was like 20 dancers, we were all butt-ass naked with the big truck, the smoke ... it was so much."
Still, that refusal to do anything close to the bare minimum has made Doechii one of 2022's most buzzed-about artists. She can elevate a track with delightfully simple melodies and deliver bars that land like a boxer's blows, adopting new voices or production styles to fit the moment.
Her breakthrough song, "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake," was a first-day-of-school-style introduction to the kid who couldn't keep quiet in class, while the much smoother "Persuasive" earned her a remix from superstar labelmate SZA. "Crazy," whose video sought to reframe women's bodies "not in moments of sexuality but instead in moments of truth, intensity, and power," according to its director Sarah C Prinz, was blocked from trending on YouTube due to nudity and violence.
Doechii, born Jaylah Hickmon, grew up in Tampa, Florida, with her mother and her two sisters. Inside that house, the energy was off the walls — her twin Aries sisters were lovably "obnoxious" but equally as creative (her first sister painted multiple pictures that now hang in Doechii's house, and she's recorded a as-yet-unreleased song with the other).
Outside the family unit, Doechii kept her personality under wraps, too uncomfortable to let herself go at school.
"I only felt safe to be myself at home," she says. "When I'd try to be myself around my peers, it just wasn't embraced. To other people who I grew up around, they'd probably tell you that I was shy, but I really wasn't shy. I was just scared as f— of them."
A true child of the internet, Doechii turned to YouTube to express herself, convinced she could build a following before she knew what she wanted to make. She churned out vlogs about anything that interested her, whether it was outlining her first fight, giving advice to high-school seniors or describing the time she got fired from Chipotle.
Once she settled on music, that prebuilt audience was both a gift and a curse. She remembers her first performance at a Tampa hookah lounge, where she showed up to learn she hadn't been booked for her artistry but for her follower count.
"I got there and realized they basically used me to promote the show," she says. "They didn't even want me to perform. They told me to come at 10, and when I came, no audience was there. I still performed though."
Despite the early struggles, she quickly rose to the top of Tampa's compact music scene. Back then, Doechii thought those familiar Tampa stages were as far as she'd go.
When asked if she'd have been content with topping out as a local artist, she needs a beat to think. "I want to answer honestly," she says.
Resigned to her truth, she shakes her head no.
"I was about to say yes," she says. "I was content with being a small artist, but never just Tampa. I wanted to get out of my city."
In 2019, she got her wish when she was booked for a showcase in New York City. Doechii copped a bus ticket and headed to the gig, her eyes widening at the places she could go — until she realized she didn't have enough money for the return trip.
"The night after (the show), I slept at a McDonalds," she says. "And then I had to call one of my mom's friends, who I hadn't talked to in years, and, like, beg her to let me sleep at her house. And I slept there for a while and ended up living there until I got back on my feet."
Doechii eventually embraced the underdog role, using it to fuel her EP "Oh, the Places You'll Go." Childlike wonder bounds across the seven-song project, from the Dr. Seuss-themed title to the bubbly synths and references to Silly Bandz.
But it was "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake," named after the Junie B. Jones children's book of the same name, that finally gave her the spotlight she'd been seeking. The song made waves on TikTok and caught the ear of Anthony "Moosa" Tiffith, president of TDE, the L.A.-based label that brought Kendrick Lamar and SZA to the forefront of culture.
"It shows her versatility," Tiffith said of what drew him to the song. "The backpack rap that we're known for at TDE on that second half. But then this kind of obnoxious first half where Doechii's just being Doechii. It's complete star quality."
By then, Doechii was being courted by multiple labels. She did the circuit, testing their studios and enduring the courtship process, until the lowball offers came and turned her off from the entire system.
She was convinced she wanted to stay independent, but Tiffith and TDE convinced her otherwise.
"N—," she says about what made TDE feel special. "Black people. It's Black owned. And also, the artists. It's a certain energy and culture on TDE, and I wanted to be a part of that."
She flew to L.A. in January 2021, after a brief stint back in Tampa during the pandemic, and quickly wrote and recorded "Crazy," channeling all her pent-up ambition and expunging it onto the microphone.
"I'd always wanted to move to California," she says. "I was like, 'This is my chance, and I'm not going to miss it.' That's where all the energy on that song came from — I just didn't want to go home."
Her first proper TDE release wasn't her own song, however, but a guest spot on Isaiah Rashad's "Wat U Sed."
"The homies were like, 'Bro, she killed it,'" Rashad says of Doechii's verse. "And I'm so anti, I'm like, 'She ain't kill that s—.' But then I sat with it, and I was like, 'This mother — murdered me.'"
Doechii began 2022 with two singles, "Persuasive" and "Crazy," before releasing her third EP, titled "she / her / black b—h."
"All last year, and a little at the beginning of this year, I was in a very ego-driven, masculine space," she says. "Super ambitious, very materialistic. I don't even think it's good or bad or anything, it's just where I've been. That's what the EP sounds like: fashion, sex, alcohol, drugs."
It's her last EP before her debut album. Doechii wants to keep the details under wraps for now, but says completing it is now her primary focus.
"She got a plan," Rashad says of Doechii. "She was different than other 21-year-olds, because she knows what she wants to do. When I was 21, 22, I just knew I wanted to be somebody. But she's everything, she's a director, she's an A&R, she's all these things already. I don't want to call her fully formed, because it wouldn't leave her any room to grow, but she's something."
Aside from the album, her goal for the rest of 2022 is to find her true footing in Los Angeles. She's embraced the city's nightlife, preferring to hit LGBTQ-centric events because straight people are too "boring and uptight."
She's also recently moved to Encino from DTLA, building a home studio so she can record vocals in a more comfortable environment. Her mother is even relocating to the area from Tampa.
"I've been thinking about my house like an actual kingdom, and getting more serious about how I protect my internal and external home and my body," Doechii says. "I've been slowing down on drinking. I went through a rockstar phase, just going crazy, and now it's time to get back into my empress energy. Relax and be soft."
There was a time when Doechii was happy just to have 10,000 followers — so happy that in 2015 she made a 10-minute YouTube video to celebrate. The video shows her reactions after hitting 18 subscribers, then 52, then 400 and finally 1,000: validation, she said then, that she was on the path toward putting a smile on one billion faces.
Seven years later, she feels she's on the doorstep.
"Couple million in," she says. "I saw almost a million videos made to 'Yucky' across all platforms. Over 40 million streams. And I've physically seen a lot of people smile and create memories to the music. So I think we're close."
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