Doechii admitted she never thought Alligator Bites Never Heal would explode, but the mixtape landed her a Grammy and a Billboard Top 10 spot.
Doechii scored a Grammy and a Top 10 Billboard debut with Alligator Bites Never Heal, but revealed she never thought the mixtape would take off the way it did.
The Tampa-born rapper told People that her 2024 project was more of a personal outlet than a calculated career move.
“No, not at all. I wasn’t even in that mind frame,” she said when asked if she expected the release to be her breakout moment. “I just wanted to get my story out and say what it is that I wanted to say. It was really an experiment.”
Released in August, the mixtape became her most significant success to date.
It climbed into the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 and later earned her a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in February — a historic win that made her only the third woman to ever take home the trophy in that category.
The “Anxiety” rapper explained that she had set a personal deadline for the project’s release.
“I had a deadline in my head, and I was like, ‘I just feel like I have to drop it at this time, and if I don’t, I’m going to miss the mark on something within myself,’” she said. “And so I didn’t expect for it to be nearly as big because right after that I was just like, ‘I’m just going to put this mixtape out, and then I’m just going to go ahead and drop my debut album, and that would be the one.’”
Instead, the mixtape’s unexpected momentum shifted her timeline.
“But it ended up becoming way bigger than I expected and pushing things back a little bit,” she added.
Despite the acclaim, Doechii still hasn’t released her first full-length studio album.
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