If the powers that be at TDE were worried about direction or execution, they wasted their energy. Doechii has long shown herself to be an exceptionally reflective artist, carefully considering what she wants to be doing at any given moment, and she takes a few opportunities here to poke fun at anyone who thought otherwise. She tells “fake activists” to relax a bit, likely a reference to the controversy surrounding her platinum Kodak Black collaboration “What It Is (Block Boy)” from 2023. “Boom Bap” laughs off those who felt that single strayed too far from their image of her as a rappity-rap savant — and in truth, it feels unduly constrictive to label her as anything at all in this moment. The sheer ground covered on the tape is astonishing — from “Boiled Peanuts,” which seems to channel “Woo Hah!!” Busta Rhymes, to the screwed-up Baduizm of “Skipp,” the storytime rhymes of “Denial Is a River” and the blurry psych soul of the title track, all pit stops along a victory lap full of gobsmacking lyrical feats and stunts that feel like showing off. There is a reductive impulse to think of the performances as "schizophrenic" — a characterization Doechii is aware of, rapping, on “Nissan Altima,” “They like ‘Doechii, you delulu, you a loose screw’ ” — but the turns are too calculated. This is not a fragmenting of the psyche, or even the embrace of alter-egos as a kind of rap LARPing; it is a peeling back of her psyche’s many layers.