Doechii at Howard W. Blake High School in Tampa, Florida on Nov. 12, 2024. Credit: Photo by Dave Decker

The swamp was packed to capacity (and maybe then some) on Tuesday for the return of Tampa’s homegrown rap star, Doechii.

Fresh off of three nominations at 2025’s Grammy awards—which have her running for Best New Artist, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Album—the 26-year-old Blake High School alum made a hometown stop at Crowbar for her sold-out Alligator Bites Never Heal tour, which shares the same name as her recently-released album.

While the show started out a bit later than scheduled and experienced a few technical difficulties during the set of last-minute opener DJ T. Couture, the feeling of excitement amongst the buzzing crowd never wavered. Despite the air feeling cool and breezy outside, the sheer amount of well-dressed bodies crammed inside the intimate venue created a familiar Florida humidity that matched the tropical flora and fauna that decorated the entire Crowbar stage.

At 9 p.m., after an hour-or-so of hype music followed by about 10 minutes of swamp noises (think cicadas, croaking frogs, etc.) Doechii emerged onto her swamp to the backdrop of an “Alligator Bites Never Heal” banner. The crowd went wild, as expected, as she quickly jumped into a supercut version of “Boom Bap” that quickly transitioned into “Boiled Peanuts” and “Denial Is A River”—all leading tracks off of her critically-acclaimed second LP.

“I’m back home bitches! We’re going to have a good night, we’re going to have a lot of fun,” Doechii said with a laugh before heading into “Death Roll” and the Top Dawg-released single “Persuasive,” which saw features from SZA and Kodak Black in 2022.

Between some astrology banter, the search for the best dressed fan at the show, crowd affirmations, a search for “the gays,” and continuous hype from Doechii’s right hand woman DJ Miss Milan, the hour-ish-long performance ebbed and flowed through slower and more serious rap-heavy songs, to viral bops, vulnerable anthems and strobe-lit club bangers—a true testament to Doechii’s dynamic ability to span many genres while continuously commanding the crowd.

The Tuesday night hometown performance spanned her six year-old discography, which featured a few older songs like the 2019, moan-filled single “Spooky Coochie,” as well as various tracks from her 2020 debut LP, Oh The Places You’ll Go.

Photos: Fresh off four Grammy nominations, Tampa rapper Doechii returns to Blake High School

Doechii and JT’s clubby dance anthem “Alter Ego” and the inescapable Tik Tok-viral bop “What It Is?” kept the crowd moving in between introspective, rap-heavy songs like “Bullfrog” and the unreleased “Sunday’s Best”—a heartfelt, almost gospel-like track that helped showcase the rapper’s singing skills, too.

Another serious moment of the night was marked by the performance of “Black Girl Memoir.” A piece of sage slowly burned next to Doechii as she dedicated the optimistic song to “all of the beautiful Black girls out there” and repeated its tear-jerking hook to a young, hopeful crowd: “I could be anything…I can do anything.”

The eventual arrival of the blood-pumping, Grammy-nominated song “Nissan Altima” and 2023 single “Crazy” helped Doechii unleash her archetypal stage presence and affinity for ass shaking about halfway through the 20-song setlist. These back-to-back tracks truly showcase Doechii’s impressive ability to rap for like, 20 seconds without taking a breath and then head directly into a dance break. Tiring stuff.

The last few songs of the night skewed back to the recently-released Alligator Bites Never Heal album with tracks like “GTFO,” “Slide” and the final song “Wait,” which eventually turned into a crowd sing-a-long of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.”

Doechii returned once more to the stage for “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” an encore requested by the crowd and consequently rapped bar-for-bar by her hundreds of fans. The track—a 2020 a coming-of-age single that represents the awkward middle school years—felt like a fitting end to the hour-long set.

Although the rising rapper has only been in the limelight for a few years, Doechii’s material spans throughout her childhood, teenage years, rise to fame in her early 20s and lands in the sobering, gritty and raw present that her latest LP delves into. The set not only traversed genres across rap, hip-hop and pop, but also explored a variety of themes from fame, sexuality, faith and addiction to colorism, mental health, money and more.

Doechii’s very sold-out show in Tampa represented more than just a homecoming show where friends and family gathered alongside OG fans and recently-acquired listeners alike. With the deep-running themes and symbolism of “Alligator Bites Never Heal” so rooted in Florida’s Black subculture, it felt appropriate that the vulnerable, coming-of-age body of work had its time to shine in Tampa.

Last night’s performance felt like a celebration of Doechii’s short, yet successful career thus far, but also gave us a glimpse into her future of superstardom. Everyone in the roughly 300-capacity Crowbar knew that they would probably never see Doechii play that small of a venue ever again—small room quirks like the rawness of her voice, the simple stage backdrop and lack of theatrics helped make this gig feel as special as it was.

Before leaving the stage, Doechii had a few more words of affirmation for her hometown, especially for the young artists and musicians of the Tampa Bay area—which was possibly inspired by her return to her alma mater Blake High School earlier that day.

“Listen…you can do any-fucking-thing you can put your mind to. I am from Tampa fucking Florida and I did it…I did it!,” she addressed the screaming crowd for the last time. “There are so many wonderful creatives and artists in this room, and ya’ll have the same capabilities that I do to be where it is you wanna be.”

“Tampa, I love y’all so much, thank you!”

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