Songfacts®:

• When Doechii signed with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2022 she didn't have a car, so the label bought one for her: a used Nissan Altima. When she crashed it, Top Dawg found out why she didn't have a car: She didn't really know how to drive. She had her license but never had a car before and always avoided driving. This was difficult when she moved from Tampa to Los Angeles, where everyone drives everywhere, often like lunatics. "LA is stressful driving," she said on The Breakfast Club. "It's too much. I get anxiety. But yeah, I wrecked the car. It was horrible."
  
  So, the Nissan Altima, a modest, mid-priced sedan, has special significance to Doechii, so she used it as the title to this song, even though it never shows up in the lyric.
• There's a long history of rappers flexing on tracks they name after cars, from "Aston Martin Music" by Rick Ross to "Beamer, Benz, Or Bentley" by Lloyd Banks, but Doechii flips the script with this flex named after a car no rich rapper would ride in unless it showed up as an Uber. It shows how she's stayed grounded and is more concerned about her artistic integrity than what's in her garage. Doechii grew up poor and was broke when she signed with Top Dawg Entertainment even though she had a viral hit under her belt with "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake." A Nissan Altima was a big step up from no car at all.
• Doechii was leveled up as a writer and rapper at this point, and on "Nissan Altima" she shows off some clever wordplay and versatile flows. One of our favorite lines: "Doechii cooler than a fan, but she get hotter than a sauna."
• The song was produced and co-written by Childish Major, who worked with Doechii's Top Dawg labelmate SZA on her 2014 song "Green Mile."
• The Nissan Altima Doechii crashed is the setting for the video. Because she crashed it, it's being towed away, so she never drives it in the clip. Instead, she and her labelmates Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Isaiah Rashad hang out in and around the car and the tow truck.
• The song is part of Doechii's 2024 album Alligator Bites Never Heal. She says the album title is open to interpretation, but alligators are fixtures in her home state of Florida. It took her just a month to record the 19 tracks on the album.
• Doechii lands a Sex And The City reference with the lines:
  
  I'm like Carrie Bradshaw with a back brace on
  I been carrying you b--ches now for way too long
  
  Carrie Bradshaw was the lead character on the show, tasked with carrying the rest of the cast, who could be so metaphorically heavy she's need a back brace for support.
• Doechii earned her first three Grammy nominations in 2024 when "Nissan Altima" was nominated for Best Rap Performance, Alligator Bites Never Heal for Best Rap Album, and she was up for Best New Artist.