I am tragically late to rapper/singer/songwriter/actor Doechii.

My first exposure to her came a few weeks ago via a link to her rapping and singing her song Anxiety, which samples the hook from Somebody That I Used to Know. Her energy and enthusiasm were boundless and infectious, her voice ethereal yet raw. I couldn’t stop watching. I felt like I was discovering a new talent.

That video, it turns out, was from five years ago. Then, just last month, she won a Grammy for Best Rap Album for her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal.

Is this what middle age feels like? Still, better to be in the caboose than stranded at the station.

Her Grammy win brought her NPR Tiny Desk concert from December back into rotation, and that’s what toppled me fully into the Doechii rabbit hole.

Doechii is irresistibly magnetic, utterly captivating, at once frenetic and nonchalant. I was absolutely mesmerized as she and her band performed at that desk. And her voice!—delicate and wispy one minute, rough and prickly the next—vulnerable and defiant in equal measure.

She’s a breathtakingly clever lyricist—dense, intricate, playful—and an evocative storyteller. She likewise brings considerable musicality to her arrangements, showcasing substantial range, from lush and orchestral beats (reminiscent of lo-fi), to textured, bouncy, and anthemic bops.

(Her Tiny Desk compositions brought a jazzy, ’90s hip-hop flavor, at one point with a brief but explicit reference to Digable Planet’s Rebirth of Slick’s sample of Art Blakely’s Stretching.)

She’s also blessed with a natural theatricality, possessing the dramatic spirit of a gifted musical theatre performer, despite no such experience. I’m hoping she’ll pursue this path; she has Future Broadway Star energy. In fact, I’ll wager she’ll need to clear space for the rest of the EGOT trophies within the next decade.

(Seriously. Watch the first few minutes of the music video for Denial is a River for a glimpse. She’s got some acting chops—natural, comfortable (likely honed over a decade of performing on YouTube and TikTok), and the ability to quickly and believably escalate emotionally. It’s evident in the Tiny Desk concert too. She was also in a 2023 movie, Earth Mama, her first acting gig. It won’t be her last.)

You can bet I’ll be watching Doechii’s career with tremendous interest.

I’d been reading raves for days about the seven-minute musical cold open for this Questlove-helmed documentary, so when it popped up in my Peacock “For You” list Saturday night, I figured I’d catch the intro before jumping into another episode of Columbo or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Two hours later, as the credits rolled over the rousing finale of Hey Jude intercut with a synced montage of musical acts, I wondered not whether Ladies & Gentlemen… would win an Emmy, but rather how many.

First, that much-ballyhooed opening sequence: It will certainly go down as perhaps the greatest musical mashup ever created for a documentary. Questlove’s decades of DJing is on full aural display as he overlays and intertwines dozens of performances, all perfectly beat-matched, weaving sonic stories from juxtaposed two-second clips.

The musical collage offered several moments of jaw-dropping awe: the divine inspiration of blending Bobby McFerrin’s Drive with Busta Rhymes’ Tear Da Roof Off and TLC’s Creep. The fulfilled expectations—as soon as Queen’s Under Pressure came on, you knew Vanilla Ice’s legally distinct™ Ice Ice Baby would soon follow. And sheer delight that can’t be logically explained—I got all verklempt when Cher’s I Found Someone segued seamlessly into Hanson’s MMMBop.

These moments carried through to the end as Questlove masterfully interwove Taylor Swift, Billy Preston, Ed Sheeran, Backstreet Boys, Salt ’N’ Pepa, Simon & Garfunkel, Spice Girls, and Tina Turner into one triumphant all skate. Only Questlove—with his deep musical knowledge, ambition to create, and attention to detail—could pull off this audacious act.

In a New York Times interview, Questlove explains how this sequence came to be:

It’s impossible for me to phone anything in, even if I wanted to. I just wanted to throw the ultimate D.J. gig and hook you in from the gate. It started off small, and it couldn’t stop.

In the beginning, I was just going in five-year intervals — what’s the three strongest moments between ’75 and ’80? — and do it that way. But I’m so programmed as a D.J. it’s physically impossible for me to gather a group of songs together and not start — that’s my version of improvisation. And once you put, like, 17 songs together, you have a conversation with yourself: “OK, are we really doing this?”

The documentary probably claims its Emmys on the strength of these seven minutes alone.

But the rest of the two-hour show makes an even stronger argument, as it explores the remarkable impact SNL musical performances have had on our culture: The first rap artists on television; performers from Adele to Frank Zappa; Dick in a Box. SNL has both shaped and reflected the music we listen to in ways that I’d forgotten—or perhaps taken for granted—until watching this documentary. Just the sheer scope of genres represented is overwhelming. Or, to quote Jem Aswad’s MSN review:

In terms of its musical guests, “SNL” has no real parallel in American television history.

Out of the hundreds of performers that were showcased, there may have been three or four I’d never heard of before. (The group Fear was among them, but gosh, I loved that segment!) That is a remarkable achievement for a show that’s best known for comedy. Yet I’ll admit, when I watched SNL more regularly, it was often driven by the musical guest even more than it was by the host. I’m guessing that’s true for a sizable portion of its audience.

The film goes well beyond a simple retrospective of musical guests. It tells stories of classic sketches that almost never aired, and spotlights the many parodies, music-driven sketches, and controversies from the show’s 50-year history, and contextualizes them—in some cases with backstage footage, which proved particularly revealing and, as a TV nerd, especially rewarding.

Questlove has achieved legendary status in the music industry and is already a multi-award-winning documentarian. His latest foray into the genre cements his place as one of our top musical filmmakers.

If the goals of a documentary are to educate, entertain, illuminate, and inspire, Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music hit the superfecta.