Four tracks on her new mixtape Alligator bites never heal, Doechii gasps for air. Make no mistake: The 26-year-old rapper isn't short of lungs. But after five years in the music business – a period during which he was signed to Kendrick Lamar's former label Top Dawg Entertainment – he won a coveted spot in 2022 XXL Freshman Class, and released a platinum single with the R&B-focused “What It Is (Block Boy)” — Doechii yearned for the kind of breath that up-and-comers are usually ill-advised to take. In the final bars of “Denial Is a River,” a candid conversation with a therapist alter ego, Doechii illustrates the consequences of life in the fast lane: her therapist suggests a breathing exercise, and Doechii rhythmically hyperventilates, fluttering in the space between a scribble and panic attack.
Alligator bites never heal fits Doechii like an oxygen mask. On her most ambitious and musically diverse project to date—19 tracks that feel more sensitive and self-possessed than her recent spate of club-ready singles—she leaves room for vulnerability. It's a formidable debut full-length, fluid yet focused, reiterating her playful and melodic sides without skimping on hard-hitting hip-hop.
Doechii burst onto the scene with his 2020 EP Oh the places you will goa seven-song compilation pretty much defined by the cute viral hit 'Yucky Blucky Fruitcake'. she / her / black bitchher 2022 debut EP for TDE, marked a definitive shift away from the bubbly aesthetic. On subsequent singles, Doechii pushed into faster and faster territory, embracing Rico Nasty's punk sensibilities on “Pacer” and experimenting with house music on “Alter Ego.” She's a capable chameleon, but the search particularity of her early tracks was MIA. As Doechii put it on recent single 'MPH': “I could drop them conscious shit, but I'm too busy giving them pussy.”
Alligator bites never heal it's all about the processing, not the posture. Doechii raps with sober confidence, acknowledging that he's “lost friends, he's lost like loose skin” and the pressures of label expectations and impostor syndrome. On the opening track “Stanka Pooh,” he goes through disturbing thoughts: “What if I choke on this Slurpee? What if I make it big? What if my car explodes while I'm getting gas and smoking a cigarette?' Just when it gets serious, he eases the burden with a cutting couplet: “What if these are the only fears I'll take to my grave/I piss you hoes dead or alive.” This is Doechii at her best – anxious, funny, pissed off with a hoe.
