Doechii stopped by Genius to break down her song “Denial is a River,” a standout track from her mixtape 'Alligator Bites Never Heal.' The song pays homage to a famous Wendy Williams interview, blending humor and introspection. On this episode of Verified, the Florida native shares the inspiration behind the track, how older generations have influenced her storytelling in her music, the journey to rediscovering her creativity after feeling creatively numb, the symbolism behind the mixtape’s cover art, and much more!
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MusicTranscript
00:00The source is in me.
00:01It's not in a bottle.
00:03It's not in a label.
00:04It's not in a man in a suit.
00:05It's not in a dollar bill.
00:06It's not in a radio.
00:07It comes from me, and I don't need anything outside of myself and the glory of God to
00:12lead me anywhere in my career.
00:14And once I did that, I was like, I'm going to write a mixtape.
00:17It's going to be fantastic.
00:18I'm going to tell my story the way I want to tell it.
00:20I don't care about hits, shut up!
00:25And I made the mixtape.
00:30Denial is a River represents two things for me.
00:36One is just the pure storytelling element of hip hop.
00:40It takes me back to like a Slick Rick children's story type of energy, which I really, really
00:45value and love.
00:46The other half of it is just me in a humorous way, talking about a lot of dark things.
00:51It's like a diary entry.
00:52I was in the studio, and I actually had a real journal entry, and I was like, I'm just
00:59going to say my truths very, very honestly and rawly, and I'm not going to try to be
01:05metaphorical about it.
01:06I'm just going to tell a story in chronological order and unpack what's happened to me over
01:11the past couple of years.
01:12It took me a couple of days to write it, but once I got it, it was out of there.
01:30Okay, first of all, let's clear the air.
01:40I wasn't going through his Instagram.
01:42He gave me his login because he needed me to do something.
01:45And then I got a DM through his Instagram, because I just want to clear that up.
01:49And I saw the DM, and I was like, oh my God, I just assume, okay, he's cheating on me with
01:54this girl.
01:55I'm just going to see what she's about.
01:56I open up the profile.
01:57It is not a girl.
01:58It's a guy.
01:59And mind you, this is a guy who is very much like, I'm straight, and I don't lie, and I
02:05don't lie.
02:06Alpha male.
02:07Girl.
02:08Turns out he one of the girls, which is okay.
02:13You could have told me that.
02:19You thought you had a one-up on me, and I didn't let him know immediately that I found
02:22out.
02:23Never do that.
02:24Keep calm.
02:25Stay controlled.
02:26And I got my lick back.
02:27I don't know the detail about how I did that, but I definitely got my lick back.
02:35The year 2021, I'm over the sky.
02:38I move on.
02:39I'm newly signed.
02:40Coming out of survival mode, trying to learn how to live, I'm coming into new money.
02:45I'm coming into a new label.
02:46I moved all the way to California.
02:48I'm by myself.
02:49I'm kind of newly navigating Hollywood, my music, and new friends and people around me.
02:54I was kind of lonely, but tunnel vision focused on fire, recording six songs a night, just
03:02workaholic energy, which isn't always bad.
03:06But it did get a little dark.
03:14When I was first coming up, the first song that I had to blow up on TikTok was Yucky
03:19Blucky Fruitcake, and then I had another one blow up, which was Persuasive.
03:22We also had Stress, which went viral as well, and What It Is.
03:26And around that time, it's interesting because those songs were doing really well on the
03:31internet, but I feel like over time, it started to influence how I was making music.
03:36When you're in the industry and you have a label, when something works, they want you
03:39to keep doing what works, which isn't a bad thing.
03:43But I realized that I was outgrowing that, and that formula didn't work for me.
03:47So I moved on.
03:52I'm always on set.
03:54Everything was moving so fast and happening.
03:56I'm doing award shows and doing interviews, and I'm doing press, and I'm doing shows,
04:01and I'm just like...
04:02All of the drastic changes that happened in my life, I haven't tooken a beat to process
04:07what has happened, which means to evaluate, how am I doing in my body?
04:12What is going on in my mind right now?
04:13What are my morals?
04:14Who am I now that I'm in a new world and in a new space?
04:18I didn't have time to process that, because I had to focus on other things.
04:28In music, there is a formula that works.
04:31There's a formula that works for radio.
04:34There's a formula that works for pop.
04:36There's a formula that works for hip hop as well.
04:38It felt like at that time, that particular formula was diluting my story, my ability
04:46to be vulnerable.
04:48It was diluting my creativity.
04:51Music is about creativity and therapy for me.
04:55At some point, I lost sight of that.
04:57When I lost sight of that, it caused me to be just sad and depressed.
05:04The TikTok formula, the TikTok music formula, fuck that.
05:08It's cool, but not right now.
05:10I need a cleanse, need a detox, but we ain't got time to stop.
05:14The charts need us.
05:15Now I'm speaking from the perspective of what other people are telling me.
05:18It's like a codependency on like, okay, well, these people know what they're talking about.
05:23And they like, okay, Shorty, you can't stop.
05:25Nothing stops.
05:26The train doesn't stop.
05:27You got to still keep doing what you got to do.
05:29We got to hit these charts, so we need to make these hits.
05:31And they got to sound like this, and they got to move like that.
05:34When I say stop, I'm not meaning literally stop working.
05:37I think I'm talking about stop creating from the perspective of what other people want
05:42you to make.
05:43Stop depending on labels and fans and people telling you the type of music that you should
05:50be making because this is what sells, and what sells makes a great superstar.
05:54That's not fucking true.
05:56You selling doesn't make you a great artist.
05:58And what's priority to me is being a great artist.
06:00So I had to stop that.
06:08Honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more.
06:10I'm going through a lot.
06:11It's a dark time for me.
06:132023 was the darkest.
06:15This is around the time where I'm working on my album, and I tried so many different
06:18things that just weren't resonating with me.
06:20I'm also at my lowest with substance abuse and alcohol abuse, and I realized that I needed
06:27to get sober.
06:28I needed to clear my mind.
06:29I needed to distance myself from everybody and everything.
06:33I needed to be still by myself with just me and God and solitude.
06:55I'm a rock star, and I like to have fun, and I do like strippers, and I do like to fuck,
06:59and I do like to dibble and dabble and doodle.
07:02It was like me also unpacking that even though I like these things, I'm still operating not
07:07at my best.
07:08I'm at an all-time low, which is what I said.
07:10And so of course you like these things, and you're gravitating towards these things.
07:14But it's a balance because I needed to admit to myself that I'm doing this.
07:19This is what is happening.
07:20This is the reality.
07:21But also, I'm not my best self right now.
07:24And just when it couldn't get worse, my ex crashed my place and destroyed all I owned.
07:30That felt like a peak in my low.
07:34Not only am I going through so much within myself and in my life, creatively I feel numb,
07:40which broke me because the only thing that I love to do is music, is how I communicate
07:45with God and how I communicate with the world.
07:48And on some real shit, I just felt like I couldn't even make music without drinking,
07:53which was really sad for me, and I knew it was serious.
07:55But in the midst of all that, a partner that I love so much destroyed everything that I
08:00worked hard for.
08:01At that point, I felt like, okay, I have nothing.
08:04I am broken.
08:05My home is broken.
08:06I don't feel safe in my space.
08:08I don't have a space within myself.
08:10This is it.
08:11Whoopsie, made a oopsie, $100,000 oops, made me loopy.
08:15Honestly, I'm escaping being serious about this, and I'm in denial.
08:20I'm gonna make light of this in some way.
08:21This has to be funny.
08:22The oopsie line kind of reminds me of, have you ever seen those memes where they're girls
08:27driving?
08:28They run over a person, and it's like, oopsie, excuse me?
08:33That's kind of the energy.
08:34I'm just making light of, okay, my life is shit right now, whoops.
08:39And I like doing that because it doesn't have to be so serious.
08:43We gotta laugh at things sometimes.
08:44I ain't a killer, but don't push me.
08:46Don't wanna have to turn a nigga guts into soup beans.
08:49The last couple of lines where I get really serious, and my voice starts to growl like
08:53this, it's the first time in the whole song where I'm actually expressing anger as anger.
08:59I built up this whole story, and I waited intentionally to the last lines to really
09:04give it to you and let you know, no, I'm actually really pissed off, and you about to have me
09:08revert to somebody that I was supposed to leave behind.
09:11That's why I did it that way, and I also just have a lot of Eminem influence, that
09:16Slick Rick, even Nicki Minaj, the way she animates her voice to just evoke an emotion.
09:22So that was what that was.
09:25My cover art for Alligator Bites Never Kill, I'm holding an alligator.
09:29That was a powerful moment for me.
09:30It was a little scary because it is a real alligator.
09:34A lot of my fans ask me that.
09:35I'm holding an albino alligator, which is one of the rarest animals.
09:39They can pretty much adapt in any environment, cold, hot, wet, dry, doesn't matter, and that
09:45represents me.
09:47I'm a survivor by heart, and I think I just started realizing and learning how to live
09:52instead of how to survive.
09:53In the cover art, I am wounded, and I have been bitten, but I am also the gator, and
09:57it's kind of like these wounds you can cause.
10:00You can hurt yourself, but you can also heal yourself, and you will heal.
10:04Is there another aspect of the song that we didn't get to that you feel like we should?
10:07Oh my God, my double entendre.
10:09No, I'm not in a gang, but I'm always on set.
10:12Catch it.
10:14That's all.