Doechii on Being 'Vulnerable' for Upcoming Album, Touring with Doja Cat and Ice Spice: 'The Rap Destiny's Child' (Exclusive)

Doechii’s career over the last few months has been made up of milestones. 

From the charting success of her March single “What It Is (Block Boy)” to her support on Doja Cat’s The Scarlet Tour, which kicks off later this month on Halloween, the Florida musician and actress can see her journey approaching the next level in real time. 

“It's like when you're getting close to the finish line and you're about to hit the turbo button. It feels like that,” Doechii, 25, tells PEOPLE of her career trajectory.

Following her performance at Cuervo’s Cristalino Nights party in Los Angeles last week, which served as a more intimate but lively taste of the hits she has in store for The Scarlet Tour, Doechii, born Jaylah Hickmon, is opening up about her excitement as she and her dancers begin to rehearse for her first arena gigs. 

Since the tour’s announcement in June, the multi-hyphenate has spent some time with her tourmates Doja and Ice Spice, even sharing a few snaps as a trio during a night out in September, when she compared them to The Powerpuff Girls (Doechii sees herself as more of a Buttercup).

And that type of camaraderie goes a long way when you’re about to embark on a nationwide journey. “I think it's definitely important,” Doechii says of forming a bond with Doja. “I mean, how I came up in the music industry, I came up in a really small town and I was really in the underground scene, so community has always been really important to me, so to know that that's important to Doja too is really cool. And to know that beyond, on a professional level, she wants us to bond in a deeper way, to connect over something besides music is really, really cool and it makes me excited for the tour. It shows me that it's going to be fun as well as hard work.”

“If I was younger me watching this [tour] happen, I would be gagging like, what is happening right now,” she adds of the arena run. “This is like the rap Destiny's Child. This is crazy.”

Being part of one of the biggest hip-hop tours of the year has taken plenty of hard work on Doechii’s end — creating a breakthrough hit in 2020’s “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” catching the eyes and ears of Top Dawg Entertainment (the home of her friend SZA) in 2022, and a string of singles in 2022 and 2023 that have pushed Doechii onto airwaves, from “Persuasive” to “Crazy” to her latest viral smash in “What It Is.”

Her latest successes have even expanded her fanbase to a younger crowd — kids who Doechii says she sees a bit of herself in. And yes, she’s well aware of that one TikTok, which she laughs about in conversation.

“I know when I dropped ‘Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,’ it was a lot of children that kind of surrounded that song,” she says. “The same thing is happening for ‘What It Is.’”

“I remember doing that same thing when I was younger and just hearing your favorite song or getting really invested in the artists and kind of growing with them from there. I definitely was in their shoes, so it resonates with me and it hits and it connects.”

That connection to her fans will likely expand to Doechii's upcoming music, as she teases her new album, of which a release date yet to be announced. The new project, a follow-up to 2020's Oh The Places You'll Go, has taught her that she’s “a lot more fragile than I thought I was," she explains.

“Music is still a very vulnerable, sensitive thing for me, and I'm a lot more insecure than I thought I was, but it's a good thing,” Doechii says. “I'm really vulnerable when it comes to my art. That's the one space in my life where I'm just very fragile and sensitive.”

“I learned that when creating this new project, and I really needed the support of my family and my friends around me, and thank God they were there, because I really couldn't have made this without them.”

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Doechii’s upcoming work is less inspired by the music she listens to and more-so a product of “visuals, pictures and films" she takes notes from, she explains. Recently, she’s been “obsessed” with musicals, from watching The Wiz and Annie to trying to catch a showing of Wicked in Los Angeles. But overall, the “showmanship” and athleticism of Broadway actors has kept Doechii hooked as she prepares for her next chapter. 

“I've just been super inspired to incorporate real theatrics and stage-like props on my sets and kind of take things back to Broadway,” she says. “That classic Hollywood Broadway feeling is so interesting to me.”

Before The Scarlet Tour kicks off on Oct. 31 in San Francisco, and before her new LP arrives, Doechii says she’s just hoping that the tour — and her work in general — can serve as inspiration to a young person who tunes in.

“I just want my fans to be inspired,” she tells PEOPLE. ”I've gotten back to the root of why I do music which is, I always want to inspire another artist like my favorite artists inspired me, so I just hope that the next icon is somewhere in that crowd and they're watching me like, ‘I can do that. That's what I want to do.’”