The bullying that almost led Doechii to suicide: “I was thinking about killing myself”
Doechii is trailblazing through hip-hop in 2025, but life wasn’t always easy. The 26-year-old rapper from Florida has made a name for herself as a prolific performer and for making music with urgency. She has multiple platinum hits in ‘What It Is (Block Boy)’ and ‘Denial Is a River’, before landing her biggest song yet, the Gotye-sampling ‘Anxiety’ in March.
Although she’s a mainstay in the charts nowadays, Doechii had a troubled youth. When she was around 11 and 12, she was bullied to the point where she was contemplating suicide. That was until she realised the bullies would have won, and she had an awakening about her worth.
“I don’t want to get super-dark [but] I was getting bullied so bad that I was thinking about killing myself,” she told The Cut. “I realised, ‘Oh, fuck, I’m gonna kill myself and then I’m gonna be the only one dead. The bullies aren’t gonna be with me, and everything they said is not coming with me either. I would just be gone.’
“And then I was like, ‘Fuck that! Fuck that shit! I’m not going for that!’ And this wash of peace came over me, and I received, ‘I am Doechii.’ But it was more like this feeling of: I made a choice, a decision. I am the most important character in this movie. This is my motherfucking movie.”
Sadly, bullying is the cause of a lot of mental health problems in school. SZA, signed to the same record label as Doechii, also went through those battles. Similarly, the singer had a breakthrough, recognising that the things people were saying about her were also the things that made her unique.
“I was bullied because I wasn’t quiet and I was awkward at the same time,” she told People. “I wasn’t this tiny sad victim, but I was more so attacked just because it was giving ‘What is wrong with you?’ energy. I always thought, ‘Oh my God. I’ll never have the approval of anyone in life, this must be my defining factor, this must be the bottom line.’
“I realised that all the things that made me feel so lame were actually what made me into who I am. It’s like, I didn’t go to prom because I didn’t have any friends, and I had no one to go to prom with. [And now] it’s so weird that my life turned into [having] a bodyguard while travelling to parties.”
She added, “All these things, if I had such a fulfilling existence and experience in high school, I would’ve felt validated to the point where I didn’t need to do anymore. [So] I just had to do more, I had to be more because I was like, ‘This shitty experience can’t be the end of it because if it is, I am cooked.’”
Doechii is having a hell of a run this year. In August, she released her Alligator Bites Never Heal project, which won ‘Best Rap Album’ at the Grammy Awards. Her song ‘Anxiety’ is a TikTok smash, peaking at number nine on the Hot 100. Needless to say, her bullies will be watching on in awe of her success.