Music

It was a lit scene inside the Grammy Museum’s Clive Davis Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday evening thanks to an electrifying dynamo by the name of Doechii.

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As Doechii walked onstage to an ear-deafening chorus of cheers and shout-outs, she was just as psyched as the packed theater as she immediately launched into a rocking and riveting 11-song set. Accompanied by DJ Miss Milan, Doechii powered and danced her way through a mini-concert that opened with “Persuasive” and included “Boiled Peanuts,” “Denial Is a River,” “Spookie Coochee,” “Nissan Altima,” “Boom Bap” and the moving yet affirmative “Black Girl Memoir,” a key audience favorite.

Before segueing into “Death Roll,” an excited yet humble Doechi took time out to directly address the audience, thanking her mom (who was in the audience) and her family, label home Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol Records, the Grammy Museum and the fervent fans in the room. “I’m so excited to be celebrating such an incredible year and a new era of hip-hop,” said the current four-time Grammy nominee.

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The Tampa-born, Los Angeles-based artist was the perfect guest to close out the last edition of the museum’s American Express-sponsored Spotlight program for 2024. The rapper is coming off a banner year, capped by four Grammy nominations: best new artist, best rap performance (“Nissan Altima”), best remixed recording (the Kaytranada remix of “Ego”) and best rap album (Alligator Bites Never Heal) — the first female rapper to appear in that category since Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy in 2020. 

Prior to that, the self-anointed Swamp Princess spent the last 18 months cementing the foundation for her career breakthrough, including a performance on the main stage at Coachella; opening for Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour; touring with Doja Cat; and collaborating with JT on the popular Eurodance/hip-hop-fused “Alter Ego. In the wake of releasing her critically acclaimed mixtape Alligator in August, she guested on Tyler, the Creator’s latest album Chromakopia and performed at his recent music fest Camp Flog Gnaw.

Taking a brief pause after wrapping her set, Doechii returned for an illuminating and humorous conversation with four-time Grammy-winning rapper Killer Mike. During his initial pre-performance introduction, Killer Mike said in part, “She is an amazing representation of that swamp called Florida that’s given us talent in the artistic world from sculptor Augusta Savage to writer Zora Neale Hurston. She is a performer; a rapper rapping her ass off at a time where rap needs some rappers … an artist who I feel is the present, the future — and who’s going to change music forever.”

Killer Mike speaks with Doechii at Spotlight: Doechii at GRAMMY Museum L.A. Live on December 18, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.

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Here are five sound bites from the pair’s freewheeling conversation as well as insightful audience questions that touched on Doechii’s childhood, creative process, hard-won confidence and career advice, among other talking points:

What made her put her pure soul into a record: My confidence is truly built and nurtured. I wasn’t always this confident. I wasn’t always in environments that made me feel proud to be a dark-skinned, outspoken girl. So this confidence is truly built behind closed doors. My mother is a single mother of three girls, and she always told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world every single day. I’d leave that home environment with so much confidence, and then I would go to school and get bullied a lot. Eventually, I made a choice that I refuse to be anything but happy. I made a choice that I was going to be myself no matter what it took, no matter what anybody said about me. And that confidence I bring with me on this couch right now is the same confidence that I decided to pour into this project. I wanted to give people an audiovisual experience of what it’s like living in my skin, being in my life, what my brain moves like, what I think about, what I’m afraid of, what I love. And that’s also why I am extremely honored to be representing female rap in the hip-hop album category.

Her ultimate goal: The end goal, beyond the accolades, the money and everything, is I want the world’s next icon to be inspired by me. I feel like they’re out there. They’re watching my interviews, studying me and listening to my music. They’re watching me. So I have to be free. I have to try my best. I have to show up, because I just feel it. She’s out there watching me. And I don’t know if it’s me that’s watching me or if it’s literally somebody, but that’s what is driving me: somebody needs this.

Staying determined while navigating her career pathway: Well, one, it’s in you. It’s not on you. When I said that I want to be the best, it comes from a place of truly healthy competition. My family is very competitive so I’m extremely competitive in a healthy way. I talk about this often, but I miss that competitive sportsmanship in hip-hop where everybody wanted to be the best lyricist. They wanted to tell tstories in the dopest way. And they would battle each other through rap, because it makes you stronger. It makes all of you stronger. Like oh, he just did a double entendre. I’m gonna do a triple. I’m gonna do a quadruple. I like that. I want to be the best at my craft. I love this genre. I love music. I like making it.

Breaking down her writing process: A lot of my writing process, at least for my brain, is I have to move quickly. If I don’t move fast enough, doubt will come in and it’ll slow me down. If I don’t move on to the next line, I’ll be like, ‘Oh dang, that line wasn’t cool. Let me redo that again.’ So I like to literally time myself. I’ll set a timer for one hour and whatever you get that hour, that’s what you get, baby girl. Then you’ve got to move on. It forces you to be in the moment. It forces you to trust yourself. And I also tell myself this all the time: I have the right to suck right now. I have the right to not say something that’s cool, the right to be vulnerable, to be corny, whatever. I have the right to be whoever I am in this hour. Then I must move on.

Advice to creators crafting their careers while dealing with real life: Every creative reaches this point:  you have to eventually choose your art. You have to choose your art over whatever thing there is. If it’s a relationship that’s distracting you, you need to choose your art. I choose to record today. I choose to post today. I choose to keep going. I choose to instead of invest my money in that, I’ll invest my money in singing lessons. It’s all about your decisions at the end of the day. And I know it sounds cliche, but seriously, as a creative, you have to choose yourself over and over. Don’t allow yourself to come up with excuses that will stop you. You do whatever it takes, and you continue to work on yourself. Then when you get the thing (you’ve been working toward} there’s a whole other battle. And you have to choose yourself again.

Lil Baby and Gunna may never make music together again.
While sitting down with Charlamagne tha God and his Out of Context interview series, the media personality asked Baby about his relationship with Gunna and if they’ll ever make music again. However, the Atlanta rapper isn’t optimistic about giving fans a follow up to their critically acclaimed mixtape Drip Harder from 2018. “We ain’t got no relationship,” he said before Charlamagne asked about fans on the Internet claiming Lil Baby “can’t make hits without Gunna.”

“The internet will say anything,” he then answered. “You know how many hits I got? So, that don’t even make sense.” Charlamagne then followed up by asking, “I know Thug says what Wham! says goes, but Thug says, ‘Hey, I’mma get in the studio, I’m gonna make some music with Gunna, Baby I want you to participate.’ Would you?”

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“I don’t see that happening,” Baby replied before elaborating that he meant he doesn’t expect Young Thug to ever make that kind of request. “Nah, I’m just saying, like, ‘I want you to participate.’ I don’t know what nobody else will do. But as far as me, know what I’m saying?”

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Charlamagne then brought up his “350” record from 2023 where Baby rapped, “Ain’t never say nothin’ ’bout it, nigga, you know you a rat” on the song’s first verse, but he brushed the controversy surrounding that line off. “That’s just the Internet, what they gonna create,” he answered. “I talk about rats in every song I had since I started rappin’.” Adding, “They just be creating a narrative and I don’t even be talkin’ about a nigga. It’s whoever’s a rat.”

The drama surrounding the former duo dates back to December of 2023 when Lil Baby told his DJ to turn off “Drip Too Hard” during a performance, saying, “F—k the rats, turn this sh—t off.” Since then there’s been conflicting feelings coming out of Thug’s YSL camp such as Thug tweeting, “whateva wham say goes,” in June and his father coming to Gunna’s defense publicly on multiple occasions.

The interesting tidbit in all this is that Thug had to get permission from the judge to be able to record songs with Gunna as a condition of his release.

Lil Baby’s fourth solo album WHAM (Who Hard as Me) is due out Jan. 3, 2025.

Lil Baby loves gambling. Whether that be on betting on himself in his career, cards or rolling dice, the Atlanta rapper is always down to play the odds.
Baby hopped on Lil Yachty’s A Safe Place podcast where he admitted that losing a fortune in less than two days forced him to get his gambling habit under control.

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“$8 million,” he said when asked what’s the most he’s lost. “Like one day, probably like 40 hours straight, I lost like $8 million, $9 million. I made myself stop gambling.”

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Baby continued: “I had Mike Rubin write a letter to every casino and ban me from the casino. I just do s–t. I don’t gamble no more.”

Don’t expect to see Lil Baby in the casinos anymore, but he’s still making it rain in other ways. The 4PF rapper and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin have become close friends over the years as they’ve aligned on REFORM Alliance ventures and business dealings such as Mitchell & Ness and Fanatics.

Rubin and Lil Baby have been the subject of plenty of memes and social media fodder with photos from his famed “white parties” on July 4. Elsewhere talking to Yachty, Baby revealed the memes actually bother him.

“I don’t play with n—-s, period on no funny, weird s–t. I’m dapping Kuzma up and Mike’s happy to see me he run up on me. I got 10 other pictures,” Baby said. “We play like that. They white so they don’t really understand how I understand. Even when the picture came out before it went viral I told Mike, ‘I can’t have pictures like that.’”

He continued: “When that picture came out, I literally made Mike Rubin go to the security camera in his house and go to the footage the whole time. I ain’t even gonna post that s–t… Certain s–t, all that type s–t like that really bother me. How I grew up, certain s–t can’t be on your name.”

The 30-year-old called Michael Rubin a “super great influence” on his life. “We have the best conversations ever,” Baby added. “He damn near fascinated with the way I live, and I’m fascinated with the way he lives so we live in the middle.”

Lil Baby is looking to kick off 2025 on a high note as he readies a pair of albums, the first of which is set to arrive on Jan. 3 with WHAM (Who Hard As Me).