Musicians Are Calling Out Their Teams

It takes a village to make a pop star — but the most irreverent new acts aren’t above roasting their own winning strategists

- MOLLY McGUIGAN

Call them Generation Y Are You Bothering Me? Performers like Renée Rapp, 25, Doechii, 26, and Role Model, 28, have seen global popularity thanks, in part, to their behind-the-scenes teams. In that way, they’re like every artist before them. But in another — namely, the way they publicly make fun of their own advisers and handlers, often in song lyrics — they are very different.

“Wristwatch, drip drop, labels want the TikToks,” Doechii raps in her 2024 song “Denial Is a River.” “Now I’m makin’ TikTok music, what the f**k?” In a way, she always was. Back in 2021, after her song “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” went viral on the platform, she captioned a video, “I can’t believe my song is trending on TikTok.” In subsequent years, her songs “What It Is” and “Nissan Altima” were similar social-first success stories, and she became even more active on TikTok. Then at this year’s Grammys, she won Best Rap Album for Alligator Bites Never Heal. The timeline is trippy: The thing Doechii criticized her team about in “Denial,” one of the lead singles off that album, may have helped her take home the top prize.