Miss Milan reached out before Doechii joined Top Dawg Entertainment
If you’ve seen a Doechii performance, then you’ve seen a DJ Miss Milan performance. Miss Milan said she reached out after hearing doechii featured on a song, before Doechii signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, and that early move helped set up a working relationship that has lasted since 2020.
Miss Milan’s 2017 pivot
In 2017, Miss Milan quit her bartending job to fully commit to DJing after growing up in New York City with the goal of becoming a performer in the mold of Beyoncé. She said, “I want to be the next Beyoncé,” then described DJing as a way to stay onstage without carrying the entire burden of being the main act.
“Maybe this is something that I can do where I can still be a performer, but not the whole thing that comes with having to be the main performer,” she said. That choice turned into a practical career shift: she moved from nighttime to daytime restaurant shifts, made less money, and kept building work through word of mouth.
Saweetie in 2018
Miss Milan’s first big gig came in 2018, when she toured with Saweetie. She also said she used to do curation promoting women artists through Audiomack, which fits the lane that later carried her into Doechii’s orbit.
Her own words point to how deliberately she pursued the connection. After hearing Doechii on one of her homeboy’s songs, she said, “I was like, “Yo, who's the girl singing on the song?”” Then she reached out directly and told her, “I really believe in what you have going on.”
Doechii since 2020
By 2020, Miss Milan had become Doechii’s DJ, turning that outreach into a long-running live-performance partnership. The pairing later extended beyond the stage: in 2024, Miss Milan won a Grammy for her work as a vocalist and producer on Doechii’s mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal.
Doechii also had her own reason for trusting the connection. Miss Milan said Doechii told her she wanted to work with her because she had seen her work with Saweetie, which makes the partnership less like a lucky introduction and more like a chain of visible credits leading from one booking to the next. For readers tracking how artists build live teams, the useful takeaway is simple: the relationship started before the label pipeline did, and it held long enough to turn into award-winning work.
