TL;DR: Brands have long looked to music artists for credibility, relevance and reach. But a new collaborative playbook is emerging where brands can offer up more parts of their ecosystem to help grow an artist's following. Partnerships benefits for brands are well documented, but what should artists expect beyond a financial incentive? This piece looks at the power of Doechii and puts forward a more nourishing collaborative framework for both sides.
Doechii has become an unstoppable cultural force and magnet for the world’s hottest brands, generating $42.2M in media impact value (Launchmetrics) for her brand partners in the last 12 months. The Tampa, FL, born rapper is not just a collaborator but a creative partner—her story, aesthetic, and resonance with young audiences offers a masterclass in what modern influence really looks like.
Whilst her meteoric rise is undeniably her own, Doechii’s well curated and expertly executed brand partnerships raise the question of what role brands can play in authentically growing an artist’s fan base (and, of course, their own in the process).
In this article, we analyse Doechii’s search, social and streaming data and pick apart the impact partnerships with brands like Thom Browne, Nike, Dsquared and more have had over the past 3 years. We also spoke to industry experts: Arina Logacheva (A&R, Curator, Manager), Angus MacEwan (AMAK, Highsnobiety), Robbie Russell (Founder, Say Less), and Andrew Westermann (Co-Founder, Shelter.io) to understand more about the role brands can play at various stages in an artist’s career.
[Becoming Doechii]
Every now and then an artist will come along with a distinctively original sound and creative footprint that shatters what came before; The White Stripes, Tyler the Creator, Charli XCX to name but a few. Enter Doechii. With a GRAMMY for Best Rap Album (“Alligator Bites Never Heal”), Billboard’s 2025 Woman of the Year title, and a string of viral performances, there’s no question: 2025 belongs to her.
The story of how she got to the top has now become a vital part of her artistic identity. A career over a decade in the making, several factors came together to create a perfect storm for the artist, who went from making music in her bedroom to filling arenas and stadia all over the world.
1. The Power of an Underdog
Earlier this year we wrote a piece titled ‘How Music Artists are Building Cultural Universes.’ In it, we explained that one ingredient of a successful music project is having the patience for the right cultural conditions to arrive that coincide with one’s creative work. For many artists, longevity depends on perseverance—a hard truth in an already challenging creative economy.
Doechii is testament to this. Anything but an industry plant, she has the receipts of 10 years of hard work, tirelessly contacting record labels and making music even when she struggled to pay rent.
Her emotional GRAMMY’s acceptance speech was a celebration of Doechii’s grit and determination: "You can do it. Anything is possible. Don't allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you. [...] You are exactly who you need to be, and I am a testimony to that.”
2. Radical Transparency
Doechii openly shares the challenges faced whilst crafting her creative universe and thus demolishes any polished image of stardom that audiences have long been accustomed to. In its place, she reveals a messy reality: you can achieve your dreams—but sacrifices will need to be made.
With that vulnerability often comes challenges, and Doechii’s music isn’t afraid to tackle difficult issues. Her latest critically acclaimed album “Alligator Bites” explores “the artist’s journey as she navigates the complications of celebrity, self-love and identity,” leaving herself nowhere to hide. (New York Times).
In Anxiety, for example, she openly addresses her mental health struggles:
Anxiety, keep on tryin' me
I feel it quietly
Tryin' to silence me, yeah
While in DENIAL IS A RIVER references addiction:
Honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more, this is a really dark time for me
I'm going through a lot
By "a lot," you mean drugs?
But Doechii’s lyrics are just one way to understand the artist—she’s been documenting herself since the beginning. Scroll back to the beginning of her YouTube channeland you’ll find decade-old vlogs from ‘Lamdoechii,’ a pre-fame Jaylah talking about school, motivation, and being fired from Chipotle.
3. Compelling Confidence
When Timothee Chalamet accepted his SAG Award for Best Actor, he was clear with his intentions: “The truth is, I'm really in pursuit of greatness [...] I want to be one of the greats”. The moment marks a generational shift: gone are the days of effortless cool and detached professionalism; obsession is no longer cringe and passion is back in vogue (See Joe Burns).
Like Chalamet, Doechii is unapologetically driven. “I'm hungry. I want to be the best. If I have 24 hours, I'm going to work my hardest to make the best performance because I want to be the best. Period,” she recently told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.
Doechii tells fans, especially women, that it’s ok to be confident, loud and obsessed. In a recent Nike spot, she unspools a comically long receipt listing her accolades. ‘Best, best, best,’ she says with a smirk. It’s part braggadocio, part manifesto—and a clear invitation for women to take up space.
To her followers, she’s more than an artist, she’s an aspirational figure that says “you can do it too”.
4. Unmistakeable Talent
Let’s be clear, no brand is responsible for the rise of Doechii. Her breakthrough is entirely her own. Doechii’s unique flow has been compared to the greats, with Pitchfork writing that “Her varied vocal tics and beat selections are often akin to Lamar’s,” (who recently described Doechii as “the hardest out”) while also sounding like “a student of A Tribe Called Quest, Missy Elliott, and Nicki Minaj” (Pitchfork).
Now with a GRAMMY for Best Rap Album under her belt, Doechii has graduated from self-proclaimed “TikTok artist” to a globally recognised talent.
[What New Role Can Brands Play?]
Doechii’s layered story and talent is infectious, and it’s no surprise she’s attracted major brand interest. From Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton, to DSquared2 and Nike - brands are forming an orderly queue for a piece of Jaylah Hickmon, the Swamp Princess.
But in the case of Doechii, a new precedent is being set. Doechii’s streams and Instagram followers are up 32.8M and 4.53M since January 2023 respectively. And in tandem, she has generated a total of $42.2M media impact value for her brand partners in the last year alone (Launchmetrics, 2025).
So that got us thinking. How can brands play a more effective and credible role in an artist’s career development beyond being money machines?
"Brands like H&M have a huge power through their in store playlisting. People actually do Shazam the music in stores and we can clearly see it on the data in Chartmetrics… When Ohlogy puts an artist on the cover of HM playlist their streaming goes up like 10-20%"
New Taste Communities
Robbie Russell, founder of Say Less, a Berlin-based brand partnerships agency for artists, argues that brands are able to use their platforms to introduce artists to new demographics.
“When I first heard about Mk.gee is when Benji B built the Jill Sander show around him. Then he gets introduced to the kind of fans that don’t just grow his audience, but introduce him into the other taste communities they’re involved in.” He continues, “Brands can help artists go broad—mainstream awareness, pretty superficial, the artist as a face—or deep—niche, focused on story or experience, the artist as a creative collaborator.”
Arina Logacheva (Music Brand Partnerships, Ohlogy) agrees, “The new Acne Studios x Kappa x Tricky has definitely shone a light on Tricky as I don’t expect many Acne customers outside of the UK really know who he is.”
Going Beyond Traditional Endorsements
Historically, brand partnerships have been treated as a transaction: one way traffic that sees artists lend their image, audience, influence, relevance and credibility (etc) to their brand partners. But this is an outdated approach. When matchmaking is done right and is able to find an authentic DNA that is shared between both parties then the value exchange can grow exponentially.
Simply put, there is a much bigger opportunity than being featured in a campaign. By understanding the full breadth of a brand's channel ecosystem, from playlists, store networks, product and more, artists can unlock new ways for partnerships to benefit them.
Arina Logacheva draws a distinction between the value of smaller brand partnerships and the potential power of a larger institution: “Brands like H&M have a huge power through their in store playlisting. People actually do Shazam the music in stores and we can clearly see it on the data in Chartmetrics… When Ohlogy puts an artist on the cover of HM playlist their streaming goes up like 10-20%.”
"The way artists have been treated by Brands in the past, is as characters on their stage. Winning now, is creating a stage together" - Angus MacEwan, AMAK / Highsnobiety
Clearly, there is a case for helping both brands and artists understand the different opportunities available for a partnership. For us, we are massively in favour of carefully nurtured long-term partnerships that grow and evolve. However, it is important to note, that the team must always remain small or you run the risk of killing creativity, or the speed at which a project can reach the market.
When we spoke with Arina, she emphasised another important point— the “brand and the artist really have to align to almost create a new cultural meaning based on the collaboration”. She continues, “brand partnerships have to be bespoke… and very well thought through. It’s almost like A&Ring for a fashion brand, it’s so much about gut feeling, cultural relevance and mutual understanding from both the artists and the brand’s side of each other.”
Andrew Westermann, co-founder of Shelter.io, also makes this point, “brands that understand that they are not responsible for creating culture but enabling it have become investors or sponsors of artists”.
[How Doechii Made Brands Work for Her]
Doechii’s journey is wrapped up in struggle, motivation and dedication—three values that are incredibly alluring to brands that are trying to sell products wrapped in aspirational brand codes.
But unlike athletes or actors who typically sign exclusive deals with luxury houses, Doechii has managed to remain brand agnostic, using brands as a creative exercise and social amplifier.
For Doechii, brands are “all about telling a story,” stylist Sam Woolf told The New York Times. Each new partner prompts a series of questions: “Who is this girl? Where is she going? What is she doing?” Several key partners over the years have allowed the artist to ask those questions better than the others. The result? Doechii elevates the potential of her creative ideas and public profile in exchange for her highly sought-after personal IP.
Thom Browne
One of her most consistent brand partners, Doechii partnered with Thom Browne on four custom looks for her GRAMMYs performance and victory, as well as the Variety Awards where she won Hip-Hop Disruptor of the Year back in December 2024.
Like her other brand partners, the collaboration is intentional, with Doechii looking to Browne’s monochromatic uniforms to pay “homage to Jay-Z’s fondness for suiting,” telling a wider story around hip-hop. (Vogue)
To date, Hickmon has generated over $9M in Media Impact Value for the designer, the most of any of her brand partners other than DSquared2. (Launchmetrics)
The lesson: Submit to an artist’s creative vision when your brand codes align.
DSquared2
The artist’s recent performance at DSquared2’s mammoth 30th-anniversary show saw Doechii generate $5.3 million in MIV (Media Impact Value) for the brand, capturing 10.9% of the total brand share of voice in user-generated content for Milan Fashion Week according to Launchmetrics and BoF respectively.
Stylist Sam Woolf explained to Dazed: “When I met Doechii, I was really just experimenting with her and we were finding our feet. [...] We were in this ‘trashy’ aesthetic for a while, our DSquared2 era.”
The lesson: Brands need to factor in future trajectories of their talents. Lead on instinct and pair based on creative fit rather than instant commercial reward.
Gucci
For her viral appearance on Stephen Colbert, Doechii honoured her "connection to Black women through Hip Hop" with a symbolic, self-choreographed performance featuring two other performers linked by interlocked braids and wearing identical Gucci outfits.
Though Gucci wasn’t officially involved in the performance, stylist Sam Woolf chose Gucci to fulfil Doechii’s vision, as she later explained on Instagram: “This is my take on the future of Hip Hop. This is blackness. This is luxury. This is history.”
The result? Doechii’s streams for "DENIAL IS A RIVER" increased by more than 170% on Spotify in the five days following and Doechii has generated over $5.8M in Media Impact Value for the Italian House to date according to Lauchmetrics.
The lesson: Brands should lean into serendipity, embracing viral moments out of their control.
Final Thoughts
Doechii's meteoric rise is a perfect coming together of talent, narrative, and well executed brand collaborations. Doechii's success is primarily driven by her personal resilience and artistic vision—but also demonstrates how mutually beneficial artist-brand relationships can amplify both parties when executed with intention and creative alignment.
For brands seeking cultural relevance, the lesson is clear: partner early based on shared values rather than immediate ROI, align with an artist's creative evolution rather than imposing constraints, and remain flexible enough to capitalize on organic viral moments.
The most successful partnerships—as seen with Thom Browne, DSquared2, and even Gucci's serendipitous moment—go beyond transactional endorsements to become creative collaborations that serve both the artist's expression and the brand's aesthetic language.
In today's fragmented cultural landscape, brands that approach artist partnerships as genuine creative alliances rather than marketing exercises will discover that authentic connection yields far greater impact than traditional sponsorship ever could.