Getting up on our 2026 scoreboard…
[Video]
[7.86]
[9]
Alfred Soto: Sipping kombucha and getting high provokes Doechii into meditating on why plaudits haven’t done shit to relieve her anxiety about being a Black woman in this second cruelest of industries. “Everything’s on me,” she says without a sigh. SZA’s instinctual plaintiveness functions as chorus. Meanwhile the click track and the bass add sinew.
[8]
Leah Isobel: “Girl, Get Up.” finds Doechii in 2AM-ruminating-mode, ricocheting between anxiety, spite, and braggadocio. I like the attempt to depict all the different sides of her personality, but it feels a little like an exercise, and the sleepy production (and SZA’s permanently dozy presence) don’t bring any immediacy. It’s not until she puffs out her chest in the last verse that the song really comes to life.
[6]
Al Varela: This is the perfect way for Doechii to hit a soft reset on her current trajectory. I was a bit worried about TDE fumbling her hype after “Anxiety” became a victim to overexposure, and the only things she had to show afterwards were a series of good features on dud songs. But “Girl, Get Up.” put my fears to rest as Doechii reasserts herself as the new it-girl refusing to let misogynists on the internet slow her down. It’s impressive how she sounds genuinely unbothered when addressing the haters, when normally putting them on blast in a song at all could risk her coming off as insecure or defensive. But her words are so careful and her delivery is so effortless alongside the gentle beat and SZA’s hook that it reassures me that the debut album is gonna be as huge as I expected it to be after her Grammy success.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: They call you the intellect cuz every space has been covered in this industry for just being straightforward rap. The only way forward is through. The only way forward is to embrace the label and break free of the safety blanket of pop rap entirely. Many pop rappers have the comfort of defaulting to “ignorance is bliss” or “I’m just sharing my truth,” but every pop rapper who has a specific, coherent ideological form that ties them to the responsibility of speaking honestly to their listeners (or simply speaking the truth they feel safe revealing) will be met with dogged fealty or vicious hate, depending on what comes with the next piece of music. The vice signaling in “I’m still popping pussy, them’s my sisters, so I can’t agree with that” feels akin to the pointed rejoinders Rapsody once gave. But Doechii was actually trying to pop her pussy with her sisters, much to everyone’s willful refusal to acknowledge them. (All of those were great songs!) Unfortunately, one has to accept that vice signaling only holds weight when the songs hit. The music has to overcome the moral questions by blinding you with the burning heat of the beat and the ice of the flow. This song is about selling drugs to poor, impoverished people, yet the artists on it are now beloved titans of great rappity rap (and one is sulking away somewhere behind wherever MAGA Youngboy is), so clearly one’s protests and pleas of vice and imperfection are powerless in the front of the reality of opening up the throttle in an unoccupied lane. Girl, get up and drive in your lane, it could be worse. (And bring Monaleo and Sol Chyld with you!)
[10]
Claire Davidson: In a perfect world, Doechii wouldn’t even have to make a song like “Girl, Get Up,” a pointed response to the misogynoir-fueled backlash she’s faced in her ascendance to stardom, which has resulted in both the usual “industry plant” allegations and some incredibly patronizing discourse about her place in the pantheon of female rappers. Still, as a piece of craftsmanship, the song sees Doechii operating with her usual plainspoken sharpness, taking pains to emphasize the struggles she faced as an up-and-coming artist while still asserting her unwavering confidence. Crucially, though, “Girl, Get Up” is much more meditative in sound than its premise might suggest, pairing gently whirring synths with the expressive percussion lifted from the Neptunes’ work on Birdman and Clipse’s “What Happened to That Boy.” The song’s delivery, too, is almost mantra-like in its clarity: SZA is predictably otherworldly in her affirmation-heavy hook, but Doechii deals arguably her hardest blow in conveying just how nonplussed she is by her detractors, operating from an understanding that their lazy rhetoric isn’t personal, but merely a product of a racist, sexist society that would rather perform absurd mental gymnastics than credit a Black woman for her artistic authorship. This being Doechii, the track somehow manages to be slyly funny as well, tongue-in-cheek enough to follow a flex about being signed by Kendrick Lamar with the feigned shock of a “she’s Baby Keem!” ad-lib. Effective though the track’s unbothered lucidity is, however, it does feel like a loss to not pair these observations with a more direct instrumental — Doechii is such an effective bruiser that you wish the song itself were more unsparing.
[7]
Julian Axelrod: How lucky that we get to hear a generational talent document her come up in real time! How impressive that those songs also work as honest to god bangers! How cool that SZA is there too!
[7]