Doechii Officially Drops ‘Anxiety’ From Her Days on YouTube

In the midst of Paris Fashion Week — where she was recently seen rocking Valentino Haute Couture at the Louvre — Doechii has dropped a new song, “Anxiety,” that is actually an old song.

The buzzing rapper took to her Instagram story to tell the story: “I’m going to break down this lore to people who don’t understand it,” she said animatedly. She explained that she originally released “Anxiety” on YouTube four years ago, before her massive breakthrough in 2024. On the song, she raps over Gotye and Kimbra’s hit “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which would have been difficult for the young independent artist to properly clear for monetized distribution. However, Rapper Sleepy Hallow sampled Doechii’s “Anxiety” on his own song in 2023. The song had begun to recirculate on TikTok recently, Doechii said, along with her original version. “And now people want me to release the full version and now we’re here!” she said excitedly. 

Now available on streaming, Doechii sings, “Anxiety keeps on trying me/I feel it quietly trying to silence me, yeah/My anxiety/Can’t shake it off of me,” at the song’s start. She then transitions into rapid rapping: “Solo, no mojo/I bounce back, no pogo/Unhappy, no homo.” She peppers the song with layers of vocals and ad-libs. 

At the Grammys in February, Doechii became the third woman in history to win Best Rap Album for her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal. “Curating it, I went in with the intention of context,” she told Rolling Stone when it was released last August. “That was a big thing for me. Sometimes projects can feel long when there’s no context to what you’re talking about. There’s no story or no narration to build on. I felt like it was necessary for me to tell my story in detail and in many different ways, through many different beats. And it was important for us to go in chronological order of what has happened to me, how that has made me feel, how I overcame it, and where I am now.”