When Tierra Whack released her single “Shower Song” in January 2024, it grabbed and held my attention with its infectious, funky beats, its absurdly comical lyrics celebrating the virtues of singing in the shower, and its wildly eccentric music video showing Whack in a clown suit inhabiting a cartoonish, make-believe world seemingly of her own making. The song was a banger with an irresistible sound, and the video was delightful child’s play. I had the sensation that I was witnessing the appearance of an artist who was not cut from any mold I had seen before.
That feeling was reinforced a couple of weeks later when Whack dropped “27 Club,” her second single and music video from her forthcoming album, “World Wide Whack.” This second track flipped the playfully celebratory mood of the previous single inside-out, by frankly addressing the heavy theme of suicide in a down-tempo, melancholy way. The video continued to show a clown-suited and wigged-out Whack in her Whack World, but now rather than a happy clown she had become the sad clown, channeling the sadness of everyone who has ever contemplated suicide or been affected by the suicide of another. “I can show you how it feels,” she warns in the opening lyric, “to lose what you love.” She holds up in front of her face a series of paper masks representing the happy faces we put on for other people, slowly pulling away and discarding them one by one as if to reveal the raw and uncontrived grimace of pain they hide.
With this juxtaposition of wildly different moods and messages in those two singles, Whack announced herself as an artist who refuses to be easily categorized. One minute she’s playful and insouciant and upbeat, making you bop your hips and sing along in the shower, and the next minute she kneecaps you with a sad song addressing a painful theme that few artists dare approach.
The release of the full album “World Wide Whack” on March 15, 2024 further proved Tierra Whack’s range as an artist and her refusal to be easily categorized. Yes, she makes music in the genre of hip-hop (she has collaborated and toured with Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys, to name two influences), and yes, she raps (she got her musical start as a battle rapper in Philadelphia, and she can spit fiery rap lyrics with the best). But to say that Tierra Whack is a rapper or a hip-hop singer is like saying that Pablo Neruda is a writer. That is factual, but it doesn’t tell you anything of value.
Perhaps this is not a poor analogy, though, because like Pablo Neruda, Tierra Whack is using language (in her case, language structured through performance in a particular musical genre) to make you feel and think more deeply. That is what poets do.
I have found myself listening to the 15 tracks on this album on repeat for three or four days now, and my “favorite song” on the album has already changed several times. While binge-listening to the album, I have been provoked to think many things and to feel a range of emotions. That is what art does.
“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears,” wrote Oliver Sacks. “It is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ears.” Sacks wasn’t just making a casual observation or a nice turn of phrase; as a neurologist he extensively studied how music gets imprinted into a different part of the brain than other memories do, and the salvific power of music to restore joy and life when everything else fails.
Whack wields her music to do both things Sacks mentioned. She lifts us out of depression with upbeat grooves and rap-battle lyrics in tracks like “Shower Song” and “Chanel Pit,” and she moves us to tears in tracks like “27 Club” and “Difficult.”
And she makes us think. In “Burning Brains,” Whack seems to point the finger of blame at an ex-lover whose constant complaints and dissatisfaction caused her untold misery, but I wonder if she isn’t talking about herself. Anyone who has spent time in meditation and mindfulness is familiar with the treacherous contours of the mind and will recognize their own restless and insatiable ego here:
Drivin’ me insane
All you do is complain
Headache, my brain, mass explosions
Soup too hot, ice too cold
Grass too green, sky too blue
Ha, ha, ha
You’re never satisfied (satisfied)
Whack is no stranger to the struggles of the mind, and in several of the tracks on this album she speaks obliquely and sometimes overtly to mental health issues and the challenges of living. In “Difficult,” she captures the spirit of depression:
I can’t sleep, I can’t eat
I feel small, so petite
I act strong, but I’m weak
Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult)
I was born to survive
See the pain in my eyes
I been stressed and deprived
Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult)
It’s part of Whack’s genius and appeal as an artist that she inhabits both spaces with equal authority: she shows us her vulnerability and sadness and dares to explore forbidden topics like suicide and depression, then she turns around and spits fiery lyrics, rap battle-style, about smelling like Chanel while she’s in the mosh pit.
“World Wide Whack” is Tierra Whack’s first full-length album. She released a previous, more experimental project, “Whack World,” in 2018, with a range of songs that were each one minute in length and were released first on Instagram, shaped by and for the world of social media. Some of those tracks would get a hot groove going and then end abruptly at one minute, leaving you hanging and wanting more. With the new album, Whack has delivered more and has emerged as a more mature artist who has things to say. She is conjuring into existence a mini-universe — Whack World — full of bright colors and clowns and music and wigs and bold fashion statements, and she is inviting us inside to share in all the poetry and sadness and laughter and beauty and tears of a human being's inner life.
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