The GRAMMY Museum was thrilled to welcome TDE Recording artist and 2025 GRAMMY Award-nominated Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance, and Best New Artist Doechii to the Museum’s intimate 200-seat Clive Davis Theater for an evening discussing her album, Alligator Bites Never Heal, her nominations, creative process, and more.
There’s a point on Doechii’s acclaimed 2024 mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, when she yells to the heavens, “I’m everythiiiiing!” Her cry hits as a refutation to those who contort themselves trying to cram her into one genre or identity. As it turns out, the self-anointed Swamp Princess is defining herself just fine. The Tampa-born, L.A.-based rapper/singer is one of the most dynamic of her generation — as compelling delivering blunt bars over literal boom bap, as she is cooing affirmations over astral jazz, as she is barking orders over blistering house, as she is seducing over a radio-conquering R&B jam. In many ways — commercially, critically, personally — Bites is the culmination of the Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol Records innovator’s wild rise. In 2023 alone: Doechii scored her first RIAA Platinum® plaque and Billboard Hot 100 hit with the “No Scrubs”-sampling viral R&B bop “What It Is (Block Boy).” She turned heads again with Eurodance/rap hybrid “Alter Ego,” featuring JT. Next, she played Coachella’s main stage, popped in to perform on Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, and hit the road with Doja Cat. Before the year was out, she was named a RISING STAR among Women in Music by Billboard (joining the likes of Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Ariana Grande), and even showed off her acting chops in A24 film Earth Mama. Recently, Kendrick Lamar co-signed Doechii as “the hardest out” and she teamed up with Tyler, the Creator on “Balloons,” a track from his new album, Chromakopia. Ultimately, what’s most impressive about Doechii isn’t simply that she excels at literally every form she explores. It’s that she is at home in her artistry, wherever it takes her.