Doechii arrives vividly in our ears, on our screens, each time we watch her celebrated YouTube performance on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk series (2024). Here she is, together with her magnificent ten-headed, all-women-of-colour ensemble. The video is an intimate, acoustic chapter of her grammy-award winning project Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024).

When Pitchfork reviewed Taylor Swift's reputation album (2017), it opened by discussing celebrity feuds, Kanye West, politics, and Swift's carefully crafted public image crumbling. Hundreds of words later, readers knew a great deal about the viral cultural context surrounding the album but remarkably little about the music itself. Aside from a few passing remarks, there was almost no discussion of what the album actually sounds like or how its musical choices shape its meaning (Cox, 2017).