Music Reviews

As Black History Month comes to a close, we wanted to put our final BHM aural spotlight on the always dynamic Tampa rapper Doechii. Not only did she perform a mightily charged set in New Orleans the night before Super Bowl LIX just 19 days ago, but on February 2, 2025, Doechii also won the Grammy for Best Rap Album for her powerful August 2024 mixtape release, Alligator Bites Never Heal (Top Dawg/Capitol). Even better, all of Bites is available in Dolby Atmos—and I’m now going to immersively delve into a pair of that album’s best tracks.

As is my custom, I listened to these Atmos mixes through earbuds, headphones, and open-air speakers to see which way these 360-degree winds best blew (so to speak). While I was wholly enveloped by Doechii through my ever-present House of Marley Liberate XLBT headphones and oft-deployed AirPod Pros, my floorstanding GoldenEar Technology Triton One loudspeakers as the fronts, along with a pair of GoldenEar Triton Sevens as the rears and my current Sony Atmos speakers for the upper-ether channels, gave me the best Doechii encirclement I could get.

First up is the self-analytical “Denial Is a River,” which was recently released as a single on January 14, 2025. (Incidentally, the fully engaging companion “Denial” video opens with a clear homage to the title sequence of Family Matters, but I won’t spoil the rest—instead, you can catch it over here on YouTube.)

As “Denial” opens with a slowed-down enunciation statement, Doechii’s own voice is manipulated next—back in the day, we’d call it being varispeeded—to delineate her inner analytical self from her outfront rap persona. The initial, faster voice—which may remind some of how Prince often sped up his own vox (a la, “ladies and gentlemen / the dream we all dream of” and other lines in “U Got the Look,” as but one example)—nestles in the center-left front, just a tick more ahead of her outward response vocal. Once the main narrative takes off, Doechii assumes command of the main channels while the piano sample and hard-hitting percussion fall in line behind her. Listen for how her semi-buried response lines (“than laundry,” “to a knick-knack”) now scatter as wide and as high as the soundstage will allow—a good test for how your own Atmos setup should handle boundary-pushers like that.

By the time Doechii gets to the “But we ain’t got time to stop” line in the second verse and the “What can I say?” sequence in the third verse, it’s full-on, full steam ahead—or rather, full steam all-around—with the major payoff coming in the final 30 seconds, after her guttural growls in “nuts” and “soup beans” come into play. I’m referring to, of course, the “breathing exercise” segment, where each of Doechii’s “uh-uh-uh” and “ahh” utterances flow up on high and act as verbal record scratching. Doechii’s final “woosah!” floats higher than the rest, serving as a fine denoument to her no-holds-barred confessional session. Produced by Ian James, Joey Hamhock, and Banser, “Denial Is a River” is an indisputable Atmos winner.

“Boiled Peanuts” (produced by Andreas, Peyote, and Hamhock) opens with some lip-smacking effects down the middle and an, er, point-blank rhetorical query about just what the bleep that specially prepared titular legume is. Then the percussion track enters as wide as can be, with warbled, sampled horn lines (think of the signature horse/horn sample DJ Muggs deployed on Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain”) and thumping bass laying it all down, right up the middle. Doechii enters next, taking her time going through the first few layered-vocal lines, “It’s a sunny day / The gang’s all here / no chip on my shoulder,” before her sneering “ah-hah / hah-hah-hah!” acts as the punchline. In Atmos, the character of each vocal layer can be better discerned than in stereo—and you should also note how the recurrence of the word “here” skitters off into the background the second time through.

Those vocal layers repeal for the second verse, as Doechii tries gamely to resist the neighborhood temptations in front of her. “Easy, breezy beautiful, erratic,” she catalogs, with some trippy vibes (the instrument, that is, not just the feels) blossoming around her on up into the ether, carrying through the next few lines. “Let me breathe!” Doechii then insists before some of the instrumentation drops out—not those vibes, though!—and the final, repeated, layered-vocal sequence calls right on back to the opening. I defy you to not join in and say “ah-hah / hah-hah-hah!” yourself with the exact, knowing kind of scoff Doechii again rightly utilizes to punctuate those final jeers.

Frankly speaking, the entire Alligator album is rife with Atmos winners (such as prior hits like “Nissan Altima” and “Boom Bap”)—and so is the new, fast-flow collaborative 360-degree track from Jennie and Doechii, “ExtraL,” that dropped a few days back on February 21, 2025. Bottom line—if you want to hear a creative rapper at the top of her game, there’s no denying the raw power of Doechii in Atmos.

“Denial Is a River” and “Boiled Peanuts” can both be listened to in Dolby Atmos here on Doechii’s artist page on Apple Music.