The biblical clash of Charli XCX, Neil Young, Scissor Sisters and Doechii came to pass and Doechii definitely did not lose out. The crowd was densely packed at the front of West Holts and sure, maybe she didn’t get her own safety warning, but it was nothing like the big snafu of 2024 – when deeply misjudged scheduling left SZA and Janelle Monae both playing to thin, barely interested crowds at the Pyramid Stage.
Doechii isn’t the only choice tonight, but you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t know she’s up against Charli having her big Brat moment, which no doubt split her potential crowd. Choosing to spend your Saturday headline slot with her doesn’t feel like a consolation prize. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking Doechii had been playing to festival crowds for decades – the Floridian rapper’s first taste of fame came in 2021 when she went viral on TikTok, but in the last 12 months she has crossed over: her album Alligator Bites Never Heal won Best Rap Album at the Grammys in 2024, and she’s been a main pop girlie ever since.
The slick, fun and thoroughly engaging show is based around a school room. There are rows of desks (that will later be dry-humped), a roll call skit and tartan uniforms – but also a boom box and a couple of playground slides because why not. Completing the high school mise-en-scene are interstitials to teach us various lessons, leading up to as this final one: “Every master was once a student.“ But once you become a master; always remain a student.”
With unbelievable lung capacity, Doechii’s rapping is relentless and thoroughly satisfying to listen to. Opening with “Stankah Pooh”, she zips through a brisk 15-song set, colouring it with samples from Wu-Tang and Nas, which lends to the nostalgic turn-of-the-millennium feel of the whole thing. Not only is it thrilling to witness, it’s funny too: she pokes fun at her viral MET Gala Umbrella Incident during “Alter Ego”, surrounded by umbrellas for an outfit change she yells, “Where the f*** is my umbrella, I don’t want Glastonbury to f***ing see me!” Would you get Taylor Swift leaping out of a suitcase on stage? Unlikely.
But like Swift’s stage shows, there’s an air of Disney-esque polish about the whole thing, particularly in the Magic Kingdom-style voiceovers for each of the “lessons” and the dancers who could keep a Main Street Parade lit up with their energy. Decidedly not Disney: the furious writhing during “Crazy”, the heavy metal take on the Gotye-sampling “Anxiety”, or indeed the refrain “Move bitch, get the f*** out my way” during “GTFO”.
When Doechii breaks the fourth wall to face the audience with a look that says, “Can you believe this” during that same song, you really feel the repressed theatre kid trying to jump out. But never more than during “Denial Is A River” with its set up – a sepia-toned video and scripted back-and-forth. Unsurprisingly, it goes down well with the Glastonbury audience when Doechii raps, “I mean, f***, I like pills, I like drugs”, the smell of weed and poppers heavy in the air, but before long class is dismissed, and with a deep bow, Doechii is gone. It feels like she barely breaks a sweat, and the crowd is high on unnamed substances, perhaps, but also on what they’ve just seen: a megastar on the rise.
