Alligator Bites Never Heal by Doechii

You don’t need to remember the name Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon, but you’ll most definitely want to remember her stage name, Doechii. While this may be the first time you’re hearing her name, it will certainly not be the last. Doechii, 26 years old, was born in Tampa, Florida, currently resides in Los Angeles, and with her third full-length mixtape in her short five-year career, Alligator Bites Never Heal, she is finally being discovered by the half-centenarian suburbanite market.¹

Doechii came up with her nickname as she was moving from elementary school to middle school in 6th grade, as something of an alter ego. She had been bullied for her shyness in elementary school, so came up with a new name to represent a different side of her personality. Jaylah was bullied, but Doechii would never stand for that.

While I’d no doubt heard Doechii’s voice prior to hearing Alligator for the first time, the first time I saw her name and thought “who is this?!” was her guest spot on the song “Balloon” on Tyler, the Creator’s 2024 album Chromakopia. That led me to Alligator and I quickly fell in love with the album. There are some great hip hop songs on here. “Nissan Altima,” one of the early singles, one of the most vulgar songs, and also my favorite song from the album, demonstrates Doechii’s skill as a rapper and lyricist.

In “Nissan Altima,” Doechii declares, “I’m the new hip-hop Madonna. I’m the trap Grace Jones.” With Doechii, it’s easy to accept this level of bravado as fact. The music is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but the reason I know she’s going to grow to become one of the most popular voices in pop culture – as big if not bigger than Madonna or Grace Jones – very soon is her attitude and outlook on the music industry and life. A couple interviews she’s done recently do a good job of showing Doechii, the person: “[Zane Lowe’s Apple Music interview]”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQI9zoqmcqM) from Dec. 14, and “[Nardwuar² vs. Doechii]”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bjFEMRgOz8) from Dec. 20.

In case you couldn’t tell, Doechii is exceedingly media savvy. In addition to the video for “Nissan Altima”, she also released two other visually compelling videos around the same time this past summer, before the full mixtape came out on August 30:“Bullfrog” and “Catfish.” That could have been enough on its own to carry the album to great success, but the hype machine continued. She performed “live on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on December 5, and then released an “NPR Tiny Desk Concert a day later.

She then kicked it up to a full maelstrom of content, all leading to the release of the amazing video featured above for the fantastic song “Denial is a River.” To increase hype for the song and video, Doechii worked with directors Carlos Acosta and James Mackel to release a series of odd TV-based teasers, using the song title (but not the song itself) as the name of a fictitious new 80s TV show. Over the days between Boxing Day (Dec 26) and the full video being released on January 2, she released a total of five such teasers on Instagram and other social media outlets (in addition, I believe, to playing them on actual broadcast television, “Adult Swim”-style):

Teaser 1: Denial Is A River Show Opening Credits (featuring the theme song to “Family Matters”)

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Teaser 2: Doechii Slaps Brad Pitt (aka Earl Sweatshirt)

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Teaser 3: La Rosa De Doechii

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Teaser 4: Can I Hit That?

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Teaser 5: The Doechii Experience

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That last teaser pays off the name of the song by finishing the age-old joke, “Denial is a river in Egypt”. The day after that last teaser, the full video for the song came out. Meanwhile, Doechii and a cast of characters hosted a nearly 2-hour live stream called “Denial is a Stream.” All told, the list of guest stars across the entire set of videos is long, including (but not limited to) actor-comedians Zack Fox and Rickey Thompson, and Top Dawg Entertainment peers ScHoolboy Q and SiR, as well as Teezo Touchdown, Earl Sweatshirt, Baby Tate, and DJ Miss Milan (no, I didn’t know all those names prior to watching the videos, but I’m learning). That is an impressive amount of preamble for a 2 minute, 44 second video for an even shorter (but no less great) song.

It seems all but inevitable that Doechii will be taking home a handful of Grammys when the award show airs the first weekend of February. She’s nominated for four awards, and it would not be surprising to see her on the stage four times. Mark my words: this is just the beginning. We’re nowhere near the top of what Doechii can achieve, and at 26, she’s got a long, star-studded red carpet ahead of her.

^{1. I jest – there’s nothing lucrative about my personal demographic when it comes to up-and-coming or even currently-hot-shit musicians. But I have a strong sense that I’m probably very much in the minority of my peers who have heard of Doechii. But I’m also certain that that will be changing very soon.↩}
^{2. I’m ashamed to admit I only discovered Nardwuar this year. (Thanks Pete!) If you’ve never heard of Nardwuar, I encourage you to watch him interview Doechii (link) and then watch any number of the thousands of interviews he’s done since he started in October, 1987. His interviews are unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and you will not be disappointed.↩}

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RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé

There are megastar pop stars, and then there is Beyoncé. Of the pile of the musicians you could claim are “on top of the world,” from Kendrick Lamar to Taylor Swift, Queen Bey is standing atop that pile with her flag firmly planted. She has won 28 Grammys from 88 nominations across her 25 year career, making her the most honored singer ever (across both of the outdated male and female categories). As a solo artist and as part of the groundbreaking Destiny’s Child, her albums have sold a combined 260,000,000 times worldwide. That is nearly enough sales so that every American, from your 100-year-old grandma to that newborn who was just born yesterday, could have their own Beyoncé record.

She’s achieved this level of fame and glory not by following the path of those who came before — Madonna, Janet Jackson — but rather, defining the path for those to follow. Beyond her pace-setting music, she is a vocal advocate for Black Lives Matter, going so far as to appear at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed up as Black Panther Party representatives. She has put her excessive cultural weight behind other groups as well, such as when she spoke out against those (including our 45th president) who would remove the rights of transgender youth throughout public schools.

RENAISSANCE, her seventh — and best — album, marries all of the above into a tour de force unlike no other. Simultaneously a “dazzling tribute to underground and under-appreciated Black culture” and “the sound of a once-in-a-generation superstar performing at her peak” (according to critics Kate Solomon from i and Vernon Ayiku from Exclaim! respectively), RENAISSANCE is the strong dose of dance-infused medicine our Covid-19 stricken society needed. This isn’t Lemonade part 2 (#6 in 2016) – there are no genre-hopping scorned lovers on this record. As Julianne Escobedo Shepherd from Pitchfork said:

“Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes; sexual agency; and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us.”

Despite oozing sex appeal throughout her career, this album is Beyoncé at her most carnal. Shepherd goes on to say “Beyoncé has never been this horny in public,” and I concur. Nor has Beyoncé ever been this vulgar. I have a staunch “no clean versions” policy in the music I listen to. My children have grown up in a house that revels in all language, from Macklemore to Run the Jewels to Lizzo. But all those are tame when placed next to RENAISSANCE, to the point that I gave pause a couple times when putting the album on. The album opens with a quickly repeated “Please, motherfuckers ain’t stopping mе.” “Might I suggest you don’t fuck with my sis” is heard prominently shortly thereafter. “We getting fucked up tonight. We gon’ fuck up the night” is the repeated chorus just a couple songs later. And we’ve only made it four songs into the 16-song, hour-long set. It’s gloriously raunchy.

At its heart, this is a dance album from the drop. Songs blend from one to the next, as if a DJ was eloquently spinning one hit after another together at the best dance night you’ve ever been to. But these aren’t existing songs — these are expertly assembled, sampled, historically-, culturally-, and musically-significant artists pulled together to represent a whole that is a million times greater than its individual parts. Grace Jones next to Skrillex, trans black television personality Ts Madison up against Right Said Fred — the whole album is a true marvel. What sounds like a glorified Girl Talk album on paper is something completely different. Just listen to “CUFF IT” blend into “ENERGY” and then bleed into the album’s first single, “BREAK MY SOUL”¹. Be sure to check out the video above — Beyoncé’s team pulled it together for when RENAISSANCE was certified platinum. The video is a quick-cut collection of TikTok and other fan-made videos of people of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexuality dancing to “BREAK MY SOUL,” and it’s so damn empowering, you’ll find yourself fighting back happy tears.

RENAISSANCE is a phenomenal record. If you’ve not heard it yet, I command you to do so. Nobody can deny the greatness of it. It’ll be surprising to my wife (and potentially others) that it’s not my #1 album this year, given how much we played it in our house. Any artist able to beat Queen Bey this year had to go to extraordinary lengths, and indeed, the artist at #1 did. You’ll read exactly how tomorrow. For now, put RENAISSANCE on repeat, crank the volume, and I’ll see you tomorrow, sweaty and exhausted.

^{1. This is the first downfall I’ve seen when it comes to YouTube Music – each of these three videos has a disclaimer at the beginning regarding the dangers of flashing lights for some people. It’s a few-seconds pause at the beginning of the song, thereby preventing the listener from going seamlessly between the tracks of this album. This is a fairly significant downside, given how this album is meant to be heard as one can’t stop, won’t stop, non-stop beat.↩}

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3. This Is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
4. Lucifer On the Sofa by Spoon
5. Palomino by First Aid Kit
6. We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten
7. SOS by SZA
8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#18 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Doechii

#2 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé