Doechii’s sound infiltrated my world during my junior year of college and has stuck with me ever since.
I performed with my college dance team to “Persuasive” at Morehouse College’s rival basketball game versus Clark Atlanta University.
Doechii’s affirmative words, “How does it feel to be that bi**h?” blasted through the speakers in the gym while I vogued my heart out with a dozen of my Spelman College sisters on the basketball court. The moment empowered me while performing in front of hundreds of my peers.
I graduated from Spelman, an all-women’s historically Black college. If you’re even a little bit familiar with my institution, we don’t play about uplifting the artists who support us, and we protest against the ones who don’t.
After going viral for connecting cornrows with her dancers in December, many people are talking about Doechii’s symbolism in this age of female rap and pop culture. She epitomizes the transition from Black girlhood to womanhood – an era in a lot of young Black women's lives that hasn't been publicized much in the media. It's that period of becoming who we really are, and not who the world wants or needs us to be. We find our distinct personal style, taste, and disposition without as much peer pressure and people-pleasing involved. We find joy in our liberation and who we're becoming. For us Gen Z Black women who have all grown up as digital natives, this transition is even more relatable. Seeing someone in the media who not only looks like us but sees us and understands us is paramount.
Doechii entered the scene almost ten years ago, posting vlogs on YouTube wearing light pink lipstick and, of course, sporting the perfectly arched 2016 eyebrow. (Many of us had a friend in high school with a YouTube channel.) A few years later, she posted a Vlogs For the 20 Somethings Series.
Leading up to the release of her 2024 mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, Doechii released Swamp Sessions, a series of music videos that brought us more into her world. The “SUNDAYS BEST" episode featured empty drink bottles and laundry while the 26-year-old artist willed herself awake on a Sunday. She's just so real!
“I’m so grateful,” white text flashes on the screen. “I feel greatness.”
Doechii expressed her vulnerability with teardrops rolling down her face in the opening scene.
“And yes I’m scared lowkey, but I be okie dokie.”
This is a prominent thought in a lot of young Black women's minds – through the uncertainty and pressure, we stay optimistic and know it'll somehow all work out for us.
For her Alligator Bites Never Heal Tour, Doechii posted a style guide for all of her fans to come dressed appropriately– with the color deep green Black women have claimed as their own appearing throughout her album promo. She sets trends so effortlessly.
Doechii also flaunts schoolgirl skirts that many Black girls were hypersexualized for in their youth and cornrows that Kim Kardashian tried to rename “boxer braids,” The “Swamp Princess” liberates Black Gen Z women to move through the world without fear of judgment.
She demonstrates self-actualization by transitioning from scolding people who used to bully her in grade school to affirmations in her Tiny Desk Concert. “I can be anything,” Doechii says in her song “Black Girl Memoir” while an all-Black female band plays behind her.
Doechii puts Black women on a pedestal and invites them to be themselves no matter how messy it gets, and it is safe to say that it is resonating. Young Black women now use the terms “it-girl” and “princess” when referring to her – titles that our community doesn’t just give out lightly.
“Use my music to encourage you through the rough days and use it to imagine better ones,” Doechii said in a note to her fans preceding her mixtape release.
While Doechii entered my life in college, I’m now a first-year graduate school student. I’ve moved away from home for the first time, and her reminders help me through my sticky patches.
“I’m constantly trying to remember, like, okay, you have to chase your goals, but you gotta check in with your mom,” Doechii says in “BLOOM.”
It’s like she’s literally in my mind. Her album plays on repeat, and the melody runs through my head when I can’t reach the speaker.
“Found a place to grow; I feel wonderful,” Doechii encourages us to breathe.
The cyclical patterns and rawness in her music remind Black women that life is a process and everything will be just fine.
コメント