There’s a scene in Cypher, the gripping pseudo-documentary about Tierra Whack, that sees the Philadelphia rapper fill up on board video games and toys (Jenga’s in there, proving her impeccable style) on the grocery store. She additionally buys some slime, which speaks to the slippery nature of a movie that begins as a simple doc earlier than morphing right into a fabulously bizarre meta-horror.
If the movie represented one sort of puzzle – what was actual and what was pretend? – her first album, 2018’s ‘Whack World’, represented one other. The file consisted of 15 songs, every of them a minute lengthy and vacuum-packed with sticky melodies and masterful flows. Its follow-up, ‘World Broad Whack’, is a extra typical album that she has, with typical playfulness, billed as her debut. Right here the 28-year-old barely dials down her extra outlandish influences, which run from Missy Elliott to Eminem, and dials up the extra forthright method taken by her final idol, Lauryn Hill.
The latter mode is most absolutely realised on ‘27 Membership’, an achingly emotional observe concerning the bleak ideas that emerge “when the world looks like it’s towards you”. It is a lullaby with which Whack navigates the darkest recesses of her psyche, crooning about ideas of “suicide” towards an appropriately comforting soundscape of tinkling keys and pulsing bass.
‘Tough’ explores comparable turmoil as, accompanied by guitar so muted you’ll be able to hear fingers on the fretboard, she confesses that “residing is troublesome”. On the jazzy ‘Burning Brains’, in the meantime, she appears to criticise her personal dissatisfaction: “Soup too sizzling / Ice too chilly / Grass too inexperienced / Sky too blue.”
But Whack additionally undercuts that observe’s sincerity with an artificially garbled voice that sings mush-mouthed nonsense. It’s the assembly level of an album that teems with a Whackian sense of humour: see whimsical lead single ‘Bathe’, which wouldn’t have sounded misplaced in truncated type on ‘Whack World’, and the xylophone jam ‘Chanel Pit’. Better of all is ‘Moovies’, an irresistible ‘90s throwback that evokes the enjoyment of an amazing date (and a good horror flick): “Larry / Took me to see one thing scary / Possibly we are able to get married.”
Playful and honest, mature however childlike, featherlight and infrequently heavy, this assured file sees Whack pull off a Jenga-like balancing act. She’s nonetheless enjoying video games, however now she’s doing it to disclose common truths concerning the ache that may coexist alongside on a regular basis bliss. ‘World Broad Whack’ is her most compelling puzzle but.
Particulars
- Launch date: March 15
- File label: Interscope Data
