Doechii’s Glastonbury slot is all part of her five-year plan

In 2023, Doechii introduced she was three years into her five-year plan for changing into one of many greatest names in music.

“By yr 5 I wish to be at my peak,” she told Billboard magazine.

“I wish to be in my Sasha Fierce period, the highest of my recreation with nonetheless a protracted technique to go – however I wish to attain my prime and by no means go away it.”

Again then, it felt like a daring declare.

The Florida-born rapper and singer had scored a few viral hits – most notably Persuasive, an ode to marijuana that ended up on Barack Obama’s summer season playlist – however nothing that had crossed over to the mainstream charts.

However jump-cut to 2025 and Doechii is a Grammy Award-winning “woman of the year“, who’s about to play one of the crucial hotly-anticipated units at Glastonbury Competition.

It is exhausting to determine the turning level. Some individuals say it was her mesmerising performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert final December.

Along with her hair fastidiously braided to her backing dancers, she delivered a meticulously-choreographed efficiency of Boiled Peanuts and Denial Is a River – a cartoonish character piece, during which she confides to her therapist that her boyfriend’s been dishonest on her with one other man.

Others pinpoint her Tiny Desk Concert, launched on YouTube two days later. The 15-minute set bursts with joie de vivre, concurrently soulful and fiery, because the star rattles by way of jazzy, full-band recreations of her mixtape, Alligator Bites By no means Heal.

She gained much more followers on the Grammys in March, the place she gained greatest rap album, making her simply the third feminine artist to win within the class.

In her speech, she spoke on to younger, black, queer girls like her: “Do not enable anyone to venture any stereotypes on you, to let you know that you could’t be right here, that you simply’re too darkish or that you simply’re not good sufficient or that you simply’re too dramatic otherwise you’re too loud.”

She capped off her win with an ultra-physical efficiency that referenced Michael Jackson, Missy Elliott and Bob Fosse – and ended along with her pulling the splits whereas being held aloft by 5 male dancers.

With three “star-is-born” performances in simply 4 months, Doechii turned essentially the most talked-about new rapper of her technology… identical to she deliberate.

So the place did all of it begin?

Doechii was born Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon in Tampa, Florida and raised in a “closely Christian” single-parent family by her mom, Celesia Moore.

A studious child who cherished writing poetry, she invented her alter-ego on the age of 11, after being viciously bullied in class.

“I used to be ready the place I considered killing myself as a result of the bullying was so dangerous,” she told Dazed magazine in February.

“Then I had this realisation: I am not gonna do this, as a result of then they’re gonna all get an opportunity to reside and I am gonna be the one lifeless.”

In a single day, her angle shifted.

“Jaylah would possibly’ve been getting bullied, however I made a decision Doechii would not stand for that,” she recalled in an interview with Vulture.

“After which,” she told The Breakfast Club, “I went to highschool in a tutu and I began doing music.”

As a young person, she spent 4 years at Tampa’s Howard W. Blake College of the Arts, after profitable a spot on the choral programme by performing Etta James’ At Final.

The varsity unlocked her creativity, permitting her to take courses in every little thing from nail design and hair, to ballet, faucet, cheerleading and stage manufacturing. Nevertheless, it was gymnastics that left the most important impression.

“The best way that gymnasts practice is absolutely, actually powerful. It is brutal and exhausting and troublesome,” she told Gay Times.

“However sooner or later in my gymnastic profession I learnt learn how to embrace and actually love ache. To view ache as me getting stronger and higher. That triggered a deep self-discipline that has by no means left me.”

The varsity additionally helped {the teenager} settle for her sexuality.

“Regardless that I used to be conscious [that I was queer], I did not really feel as snug till I began surrounding myself with extra homosexual mates at my college.

“As soon as I had homosexual mates it was like, ‘OK, I may be myself, I am good, I can really feel protected, that is regular, I am fantastic.’ I’ve those self same mates at this time and may have them for all times.”

That is not all they gave her: Those self same mates satisfied Doechii to surrender her ambitions of changing into a chorister, and begin writing and releasing her personal music.

Initially referred to as iamdoechii, she uploaded her first tune to Soundcloud in 2016, and launched her debut single Girls two years later.

It already bore the hallmarks of her greatest work: Rhythmically and lyrically dextrous, and chock stuffed with persona.

“Taking nudes / None of them for you,” she chided over a mellow electrical piano, earlier than the beat switched up and her rapping turned extra frenetic. By the closing bars, she barely had time catch breath as she listed her accomplishments.

“Getting cash from my cellphone, huh / Doechii lastly in her zone.”

The traces have been extra prophecy than actuality. Doechii had a strong following on YouTube, however she was nonetheless working at Zara to make ends meet.

In 2019, she was booked for a showcase in New York Metropolis and hopped on a bus – with out the cash for her return journey.

“The evening after, I slept at a McDonald’s,” she recalled in a 2022 interview.

“After which I needed to name considered one of my mother’s mates… and, like, beg her to let me sleep at her home. And I ended up residing there till I bought again on my toes.”

Issues began to show round with the discharge of 2020’s Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, named after Junie B. Jones’s youngsters’s e-book, during which Doechii sketched out her personal childhood.

In accordance with the lyrics, she was precocious (“I attempt to act good ‘trigger I need plenty of mates“), aggressive (“I get just a little violent after I play the sport of tag“) and steadily broke (“My momma used stamps ‘trigger she want just a little assist“).

The tune marked a breakthrough in her writing.

“I used to be missing this sense of vulnerability and honesty in my music,” she told Billboard, till “I realized accuracy and simply saying precisely what it’s, like on Fortunate Blucky Fruitcake”.

The tune went viral, profitable her a file cope with High Dawg Leisure – the label that launched Kendrick Lamar and SZA.

She adopted it up with the effortlessly hooky Persuasive, incomes reward from SZA (who jumped on a remix) and former President Barack Obama.

“I can not think about Obama simply jamming my tune,” she exclaimed. “I simply do not imagine it, but when he actually does – that is loopy.”

Doechii subsequent collaborated with Kodak Black on the 2023 single What It Is (Block Boy), incomes her first High 40 hit.

Then, every little thing stalled.

Subsequent singles flopped, and Doechii was, as she later wrote on social media, “drowning in my very own vices, battling variations with my label and a inventive numbness that broke me”.

Initially, her Alligator Bites By no means Heal mixtape seemed set to repeat the sample. Launched final August, it entered the US charts at quantity 117 and vanished per week later.

However critiques have been ecstatic.

Critics cherished the acerbic, humorous lyrics, that noticed Doechii unpack the trials and tribulations of the final two years; and heaped reward on bars that recalled greats corresponding to Q-Tip, Lauryn Hill and Slick Rick, whereas maintaining tempo with contemporaries like Kendrick Lamar.

After a interval dominated by the mumbled bars of Souncloud rap, her precision was a breath of contemporary air.

“One of many yr’s most fully-realized breakout albums,” wrote Rolling Stone. “If that is the sound of Doechii pushing in opposition to constraints, just a little friction won’t be the worst factor,” added Pitchfork.

As phrase unfold, she was booked to play the Colbert present and Tiny Desk. These performances lit a rocket below her profession. By April, Alligator had chomped into the US High 10, and the UK High 40.

Across the identical time, she bowed to fan stress by releasing her 2019 YouTube tune, Anxiety, a pop-rap crossover based mostly on a pattern of Gotye’s Any person That I Used To Know.

With an eye catching video that recreated a full-on panic assault, it hit quantity three within the UK, and even earned Doechii a quotation in medical journal Psychology At the moment.

“The tune and accompanying video work so nicely in displaying precisely how nervousness feels in our our bodies and minds,” wrote Professor Sandra Chafouleas.

“Take into consideration fast and quick breaths, racing ideas, and worrying about issues that have not occurred but. Nervousness seems like ‘Nervousness’ sounds, with good mirroring of how the expertise can hijack us.”

Since then, Doechii’s been exhausting at work on her debut album. There’d been rumours she’d launch it in time for her Glastonbury slot on Saturday evening, however perfectionists have gotten to excellent. On the time of writing, she’s nonetheless within the studio.

Talking to Dazed, she dropped just a few hints of what is in retailer.

“In Alligator Bites By no means Heals, the archetype was a pupil of hip-hop. For this subsequent venture, I am fascinated by how this pupil develops.

“Who does she turn into? What has she realized? I am nonetheless unpacking how that character develops into this subsequent venture.”

Regardless of the delay, Doechii’s headline set stays considered one of Glastonbury’s greatest attracts.

She would possibly solely be performing for 45 minutes, however she’ll make each considered one of them depend.

Because the star boasted on her single Nosebleeds: “Will she ever lose? Man, I assume we’ll by no means know.“