After Doechii’s commanding performance Tuesday night at Aragon Ballroom to kick off the Live from the Swamp Tour, it’s official — the self-proclaimed Swamp Princess is 2025’s artist of the year.
The Florida rapper first announced the tour right here in Chicago, too, as she wrapped up her dominating set at Lollapalooza in August. For two months, fans, journalists and even naysayer critics who have wrongly tagged the star an industry plant to explain her rapid rise have been waiting to see what she might bring to the stage on her biggest tour to date. In 90 minutes, Doechii not only proves herself a formidable talent and inimitable voice but also inks her status as the future of hip-hop.
If you need any proof of the power Doechii has wielded since taking home best rap album at the Grammys in February (just the third woman in music history to pick up the award) and dominating the festival season this summer, consider this: Nearly a year ago to the date of her Aragon tour kickoff, the rapper/singer headlined a club show at the much-smaller Lincoln Hall in October 2024 where her raw power, quirky effervescence and slick production started picking up chatter.
The sold-out Live from the Swamp Tour gives her a bigger stage to take over. But at this point, she’s outgrown the Aragon, which has a capacity of 5,000. The show would’ve fared much better at a stadium like United Center where more people could’ve taken part in the memorable night. At 8:15 p.m., an hour past doors opening, long lines wrapped down Broadway past Argyle Street, raising the question if all ticketholders would even get in on time for the advertised 9 p.m. showtime. As it was, the show kicked off at 9:35 p.m., perhaps to accommodate the huge throngs of people waiting outside.
Many fans understood the assignment and came dressed in the unofficial uniform of white oxfords, skirts and knee socks, emblematic of Doechii’s schoolgirl vibes seen in various promos and videos for her wildly successful 2024 release, “Alligator Bites Never Heal.”
As with other recent sets, Doechii’s “School of Hip-Hop” was back in session. It’s where she becomes both the student and teacher, taking all her lessons from Missy Elliott and Salt-N-Pepa and other legends into her mixed bag of music while creating the syllabus for a new class of hip-hop that can be wildly experimental while taking the best of traditions.
The set’s background was the same as Lolla: an oversized boombox flanked by a pair of slides that Doechii treated like her recess. Inside the speakers, the rapper’s go-to DJ Miss Milan tucked in and set up her arsenal, unleashing a series of grooves and beats and impressive scratch techniques throughout the 25-song set that included uber hits like the anthemic fury of “Alter Ego,” the summer smash “Anxiety” (with a souped-up heavy rock bent) and the old-school barbs of “Denial Is A River,” as well as several covers and remixes.
Among them were Beyonce’s “America Has A Problem,” the song that features Doechii’s fellow Top Dawg alum Kendrick Lamar, as well as Jennie’s “ExtraL” and Tyler, the Creator’s “Balloon,” two songs with Doechii features. While the artist didn’t add her newest feature — Alemeda’s “Beat a B—- Up” — to the set, there were other surprises like mixing in Charli XCX’s “360” into “Persuasive” and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” into “Wait.”
Doechii’s voice was superb Tuesday night, seamlessly switching from unbelievably paced rhyme spits to canary quality sing-song style, as was her energy. She rolled out to the stage on a wheeled desk to fit the night’s motif but soon ditched it in favor of dancing, twerking, jumping, high-kicking and running around with feral energy.
Her twin sisters, Courtney and Sydney (seen in her “Anxiety” video), joined the tour as backup dancers and brought the same spitfire qualities as big sis. Doechii was clear to make sure this was a family event. Not in ratings — her retro-style sex ed video for how to put a condom on a banana squashed that — but rather in spirit.
“If you came here alone … we are your community tonight,” she declared before the encore.
Earlier in the night, Doechii put her proverbial hand out to the women in the crowd (“This is your moment, reclaim your power” she shared before “ExtraL”) as well as the LGBTQ+ fandom that has long supported her (“Where my gays at?!” she yelled ahead of “Persuasive”). The rapper had endless words of gratitude as well for the fans who took her out of the swamp and into the limelight over the last year.
“To all the people back there that’s in those stairwells hanging on to my every word, thank you so much I appreciate you. Everybody over here pushed up against the bar, I appreciate you. And everybody up top in the nosebleeds!” she quipped, referencing her own track. “In this industry you can forget why you’re doing what you’re doing,” she said, adding, “But this is one of those nights that I’m so grateful to be living the life that I’m living.”
Doechii Set List of Oct. 14 show at Aragon Ballroom
Stanka Pooh
Bullfrog
Boiled Peanuts
Nissan Altima
America Has A Problem (Beyoncé cover)
ExtraL (Jennie & Doechii song)
Alter Ego (Doechii & JT Song)
Persuasive (with Charli XCX’s “360”)
Slide
Spookie Coochie
Nosebleeds
Crazy
Anxiety
Stressed
Death Roll
Boom Bap
GTFO
Catfish
Swamp B—–s
Denial Is A River
Balloon (Tyler, The Creator & Doechii song)
Wait (with Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature”)
Encore
Beverly Hills
Yucky Blucky Fruitcake
Pacer