On Alligator Bites Never Heal, Doechii doesn’t ask for your attention, she devours it like the creature of the title. The mixtape, now available on an extended CD version, was born from her viral Swamp Sessions, an all-out declaration of creative dominance from an artist who refuses to be caged. The Tampa-born, L.A.-based rapper and singer has spent the last few years shapeshifting through her career, and here she takes her most ferocious form yet. This is Doechii unleashed - singing, screaming, and seducing her way across a kaleidoscope of sounds, all while building her own ecosystem, murky and mystical, ruled by her unmistakable voice.

There’s a moment mid-mixtape when she belts, “I’m everythiiiiing!” and it's not just a flex, it’s her thesis. Doechii does more than just bounce off the walls between hip-hop, R&B, house, and jazz, she’s bulldozing them. One track might drop you into a New Orleans bounce-inspired banger, then before you know it, you’re floating in cosmic soul or thrashing through electro-punk chaos. The production is at times glitchy, lo-fi, orchestral, or menacingly sparse, but always designed to elevate her voice, not hide it. And she’s never trying to do too much. She’s just being Doechii. Even with all the fire and flash, there’s vulnerability here too. In quieter moments, she reckons with identity, fame, lust, and loneliness. You get the sense that this mixtape doubles as her mirror.

Alligator Bites feels like the culmination of a whirlwind ascent but she’s still trending upwards. In 2023, she scored her first RIAA platinum plaque and a Billboard Hot 100 hit with the “No Scrubs”-sampling “What It Is (Block Boy).” Then came the hypnotic house-meets-hard-bar “Alter Ego” with JT, a Coachella main stage performance, a cameo on Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour, and a Billboard Women in Music “Rising Star” nod. Not to mention a role in the A24 indie film Earth Mama.