Right as the National Guard was raiding immigrant communities in Los Angeles under President Donald Trump‘s orders in June, Doechii knew that she was walking into the perfect place for her to speak out against it: the BET Awards.
Taking place the same weekend that ICE protests broke out across the city amid the U.S. government’s widely criticized immigration crackdowns, the 2024 award show found the Florida rapper winning best female hip-hop artist and immediately using her acceptance speech to criticize Trump’s “ruthless attacks” on the immigrant population. And in a British Vogue cover story published Thursday (July 10), Doechii revealed why she chose that moment to say her piece.
“I’m not that desensitized, and it felt right,” she told the publication. “I felt like I needed to use that moment.”
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Doechii — who didn’t even know about the protests until one day before the ceremony, as she’d been traveling — also knew that there was nothing anyone could do to stop her from speaking her mind in that moment. “They were live, so it wasn’t s–t they could do about it,” she said of the BETs.
The interview comes almost exactly a month after the awards took place at the Peacock Theater in L.A. on June 9. While holding up her new prize, Doechii acknowledged the fact that protestors were gathered right outside the venue, even as the ceremony was taking place.
“I do wanna address what’s happening right now outside of the building,” she told the audience at the time. “There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order. Trump is using military force to stop a protest. And I want y’all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us.”
“People are being swept up and torn from their families, and I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people,” she added as attendees applauded. “For Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza, we all deserve to live in hope and not in fear and I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate and we protest against it.”
Doechii’s fearlessness in both music and the political landscape is partially why she won best rap album at the 2025 Grammys, as well as Woman of the Year at Billboard‘s Women in Music Awards. The Swamp Princess is now under pressure to follow up her critically acclaimed mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal, but the hitmaker told British Vogue that she’ll be working on new music throughout July.
“I know it’s gonna be a similar theme from my last project, of a real, deep vulnerability,” she told the publication of her next LP. “It’s gonna be the new lessons that I’m learning, and that’s why I say it’s hard to talk about now, because I’m still learning.”
See Doechii on the cover of British Vogue below.
