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A brief jaunt through the wonderful weirdness of Tierra Whack's debut album
By Matt Padilla
Currently, Tierra Whack is one of the more elusive names in hip-hop. While she’s recently picked up some newfound commercial appeal, Whack still hovers around most people’s lists of “up and coming” rappers, despite being active for the last five years. One constant criticism of her career so far is that it’s devoid of any full length albums, though I would (and do) argue that Whack’s sole album should be appreciated for its depth and not its runtime.
Whack began her career homeless on the streets of Philadelphia and actually chose to keep things that way, opting to lean on her own ambition and hustle instead of hitting the reset button when things got tough. It’s this determination that led her to earn co-signs from legends such as Andre 3000 and Lauryn Hill. Like them, Tierra Whack has always been a non-conformist, hence the (surprisingly legal) name. She showcases this trait brilliantly on her 2018 album “Whack World,” a 15-track album which weighs in at a whopping 15 minutes overall. Yes, each song is only a minute long. Riding the wave of some solid, lengthier singles, this ambitious project announced that Whack wouldn’t end up as just another flash in the pan, but rather a creatively subversive artist with some real staying power.
So here’s a fact: on average, humans can read 238 words of non-fiction per minute (according to sciencedirect.com). Sticking with the bite-sized theme of the album, I’ll be reviewing each song off Whack World in 238 words or less. Now you might think that’s a bit gimmicky, and you’d be right but come on, what else are you going to do for the next 15 minutes?
Black Nails
3.5/5
A fitting, if not slightly monotonous introduction to the album, Black Nails sees Whack sing about her position in life as well as her career which has not taken off the way that she’s hoped for. Despite this, she’s optimistic and bright-eyed, opening with the lines, “Reading my open mail, this ship here won’t sail/ Best believe I’m gon’ sail, if I just be myself.” Just as she did on the streets of Philly, Whack is betting on herself despite adversity. Here, listeners are invited to doubt her, perhaps before turning the album off, but those who stick around will be shown the fresh sense of creativity that Whack brings to the rap genre with this album, which more than justifies her belief in herself.
Though the message of the song is clear, the execution is pretty barebones, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whacks backed by a shadow of piano keys that seem to follow her inflection, adding some punctuation to the close of each line. This is done on purpose to support the accompanying music video in which each ending rhyme is displayed on her nails. The concept plays out much better in the music video rather than in the actual song which is propped up as a tonesetter for an album which subverts traditional tones. With a short runtime, Whack can get away with an unconventional scheme like this without making it feel grating though
Whack translates each song into a brief episode in this music video for the album.
Bugs Life
4.2 / 5
This is the first song on the album where Whack crams the usual skeleton of a full-length song all into a much smaller body of work. Though they’re each shrunken down, Bugs Life still features an intro, a verse, an outro and a beat switch.These familiar schemes make the track feel more expansive than one might expect.
Whack also reveals a bit more of her personality on this track as she acquaints us with her two loves: family and cash. This is expanded on in the outro (which likely would have been the chorus had this song been extended) in which she raps, “Loving all my peoples/Dollar signs, yeah I need those.” Just as this refrain begins to take off and the beat switch comes in, the track is cut off, leaving listeners craving for more which won’t come. This only adds to the anticipation of each following song.
Whack also familiarizes us with her refined yet humorous personality through some memorable lines here. She shows her confidence in the line “I’m in my f***ing bag,” which acts as the opening gunshot in her race to the end of the verse. Along the way we also run into a random dig at the PH level of Voss water (it’s bad, apparently) before the closing line “Send my cousin to the store to buy some f***ing Off,” also reveals her severe allergy to bugs.
Flea Market
4.0 / 5
Whack uses this track as a warning to some unspecified lover that their relationship has grown stagnant. Though Whack is overall unconventional on this album, the concept of failing relationships (a staple in the hip-hop/R&B genre) pops up from time to time. Whack never beats around the bush in these moments, which is made clear in the line “B*tch, you better bow down,” made in reference to her lover who’s hesitant to propose.
She does show a softer side on the fittingly delicate outro. This melodic, cooing closing not only shows Whack’s vocal variety but shows the woman behind her braggadocious composure, one who wants to be loved the same as everyone else.
Here we also get our first taste of Whack’s style of “mumble rap” in the closing lines of her verse. She puts an excellent spin on this style and turns it into something that sounds pleasant and fun while still being unintelligible (Whack isn’t new to this, her Grammy nominated song Mumbo Jumbo features no decipherable lyrics). The last two lines are supposed to say “Couldn’t wait to see you in a thousand nights/Easy to see like a traffic light,” but come out sounding more like “cuhtin wayya see yuh inna thouhand ight/Yee yee see light a trappin light.” This might be done intentionally to accentuate how undefined the relationship she’s singing about is. Or it might not be.
Cable Guy
4.4 / 5
Though it’s only implied, this song seems to revolve around a friendship Whack shared with a man who was only interested in her as a romantic partner. Whack explains that she doesn’t want to be tied down in the beautifully rumbling lines “Wish he had a remote just to control me/We supposed to be friends, you was my homie.”
The title and chorus imply that the two would spend much of their time watching cable together which adds a double meaning to Whack’s confession that she had to “cut off” her friend. Not only did she sever ties with him but this term also invokes the image of her cutting her cable cord as she had no one to watch with anymore.
This song toes the line between sounding forlorn and hopeful just enough so that Whack comes across as more disappointed than anything. Despite it all, she’s still singing her goofy chorus, implying that she’s doing just fine without this person in her life anymore.
Also, don’t think too hard about Whack’s reimagining of the cable channels acronyms. There’s no hidden messages or double entendres (outside of the “Showtime” ad-lib which rolls out the red carpet for her verse) to be found here. Whack does a wonderful job of diversifying her ad-libs which grant a unique sound to each of her songs much more effectively than the usual “woo!” or “It’s lit!”
4 Wings
3.7 / 5
4 Wings is a song about chicken and mourning. While the chorus details how Whack prefers her chicken wings (fried hard with plenty of seasoning) we can assume that it’s also meant as commentary which characterizes the artist herself ( who was raised tough with plenty of personality). This becomes more apparent in the line, “Here go some swag you can bite off,” which is an invitation for rappers to bite off/steal Whack’s style, like you would take a bite out of a wing. The whole allegory is a bit silly on first listen, but this is another song that really benefits from the visual aid of the music video.
Later in the verse, Whack first discusses how hard the death of her fellow Philly rapper Hulitho hit her. Though she opens the track discussing how jaded she’s become, she softens a bit here, rapping “My city needs me, I promised I wouldn’t fail em’/ If you love somebody I promise that you should tell em’.” In doing so, Whack shows another one of her greatest strengths as she utilizes a goofy concept as a means to explore a very real and powerful emotion. This, in turn, gives more exposition to the chorus. By the end of the song, Whack will have completely changed your perception of the chorus through some of the most vulnerable 60 seconds on the record.
Hookers
4 / 5
The difference between 4 Wings and Hookers is sharp and possibly jarring for those listening through the tracklist but the sudden shift from rap into pop is one of Whack’s strengths. There is no verse on this track and little subject matter to pick apart. The message of the song seems to revolve around a relationship that Whack has grown tired of, despite her partners attempts to keep her interested with his money. Again, Whack takes control of the situation stating, “Money won’t make me stay, I’ve got my own paper,” in a nonchalant showing of her own independence. The silly, playground-ish refrains in the outro may be a bit too goofy for some, but only set the table for some of the more outlandish tracks to come later on in Whack World.
These “ching-chings” and “ding-a-lings,” also conjure the image of Whack literally prancing her way out of this relationship she felt stuck in. The lines, “Move cause you’re in my way/ Why you wanna ruin my day, my day?” also go to show how unbothered Whack is after moving past this person. Despite the breakup, it’s clear that Whack will always prioritize her own joy, which she channels on this song. Other MCs might write a whole verse to sum up how unmoved they are by this change but Whack zigs yet again by skipping her way out of the song and into her next track.
Hungry Hippo
5 / 5
Likely Whack’s most commercially successful song, Hungry Hippo displays all of her best qualities. Bolstered by a catchy, poppy hook, a resounding verse, and wonderfully unique production, Whack is right in her niche on this song.
The track revolves around the idea that women are often disrespected by men when it comes to fashion sense or style. As usual, Whack breaks the mold here as she tells the story of a man who she upgraded with her own unique eye for fashion. The hook, “open up and bite it,” both ties into the idea that Whack is graciously allowing the man to bite off her style and makes reference to the title of the track which is also a game in which colorful hungry hippos bite things. In this case, the man is the hungry hippo which I suppose makes Whack’s fashion taste the little white balls. It’s not the most sound metaphor but it tracks.
If you were to just take a glance at this song's lyrics, this track may not look too impressive. Whack is absolutely a floor-raiser though and it’s her unique talent that elevates this to an incredible pop-rap track. We also hear some of the album's best production on this song which is just weird enough that it’s hard to imagine many other rappers but Whack fitting alongside it. This is easily in Whack’s top three best songs.
Pet Cemetery
4.3 / 5
Whack includes this track as an ode to some lost friend, though whether they were two-legged or four is left unclear. Generally, when we hear a rapper say, “I miss my dog” we assume the spelling is meant to be D-A-W-G, meaning they’ve lost a close friend. As you’ve probably figured by now, Whack always leaves things a bit more open to interpretation. This track is just as likely to be about a long-time friend who died (possibly another reference to Hulitho) as it is to be about a beloved pet. Either way, the song is a standout among standouts as Whack adopts a frilly tone to match the middle school play-esque piano and animal sound effects.
We also see Whack blend two contrasting tones (grief and frivolity) exceedingly well here. Before you say that you wouldn’t cope with a loss by putting your thoughts to a silly tune such as this one, remember that everyone grieves differently and would you really be surprised if Whack chose to do so in such an eccentric way as this? Though the track feels like a goofy sidecut, lines like “I talked to God today” and “I’m the one to blame” undercut the tone to remind listeners that loss is always accompanied by a range of emotions. Whack still offers listeners the choice of tuning these emotions out if they’d rather interpret this as a funky little song about a lost pet.
F*ck Off
4.8 / 5
Please please please don’t let Whack’s faux-southern twang here turn you off to one of the best songs on this album. As we saw in Pet Cemetery, Whack likes to process grief through humor and does so again here as she breaks things off with a man who reminds her of her “deadbeat dad.” Obviously, we’ve heard this song before from countless female artists and Whack having heard them all too, decides to put her own spin on this one.
Her cartoonish voice balloons with the second chorus before returning to her (semi) normal tone in the closing verse. She shifts back into a state of self-empowerment as she tells this man to do just as the title suggests. The line “I wrote this cause I feel ten feet tall,” gives an important look into Whack’s point of view on this track. This song is supposed to translate the anger that she has stored up not only with this man but in her relationship with her father as well. It’s a cathartic release, but not in an unforgiving Meg the Stallion way or even a nuclear warfare, scorched earth Rico Nasty way. Instead, it’s wacky in a perfectly Tierra Whack way, though the message remains the same. The humor here also lends to the uplifting, hopeful tone of the song as Whack reassures this former partner that she’ll be alright before the track ends abruptly, implying that she’s already moved on.
Silly Sam
5 / 5
Whack leans even further into her brand of humor with this track dedicated to a former partner (sensing a common thread here?) that she felt was playing games with her love. She references 12 different games (one game every five seconds for any math geeks) on this diss track that’s loaded with the best writing on the album.
The bridge perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the song as it goes, “If you play your cards right, it’ll be alright/And if you don’t you’re in Trouble for Life.” Taken at face value, these lines are a stout warning to her partner but the implication in the references to the board games Trouble and Life is that this man will be stuck playing his games with another woman if he doesn’t heed Whack’s warning now. It’s one of those blink and you’ll miss it type lines (if you can blink your ears) which makes it one of the best on the album.
Whack keeps the double entendres rolling in the line, “Checkers, Chess too/Player one, I’m a player too!” which should definitely earn a laugh from every listener. And if clever wordplay isn’t really your thing, the quiet brutality of “Patty cake, Patty cake, F*ck Patty, Patty fake” or the unexpected Luigi ad-lib at the end should be enough to make this track one of the funniest hip-hop songs out.
Fruit Salad
4.5 / 5
Whack continues with the theme of self-empowerment with this song about body positivity and self-love. Whack’s vocals cut in right from the jump, making this one of the more jam-packed 60 seconds on Whack World. The hustling pace of the track makes more sense when it’s heard alongside the music video, which sees Whack singing from atop a stationary bike. While Fruit Salad does highlight the importance of taking care of your body, this is only the surface level message of the track. The main thesis of the song comes in the opening line, “Worry bout yourself and don’t worry about nobody.”
As you’ve likely picked up over the past 10 minutes, Tierra Whack does NOT want people to put her in a box. This song is how she spreads her own ideology, which says that the only person who should define you is yourself. We see this uplifting mindset translated through the lines “They tried to rob me, they can’t deny me/ you can’t define me, don’t need no ID” before the chorus slices in. Whack plays the role of some sort of motivational life coach (or maybe a Spin class instructor fits in more with the workout motif) without the air of rigidity and inauthenticity that surrounds many self-help gurus. There aren’t a ton of constants to be found on this album but one key staying point is Whack’s unabashed genuineness.
Pretty Ugly
4.5 / 5
Pretty Ugly might be the album's best produced track (done by J Melodic and DJ Fly Guy). Yet again, Whack uses the piano keys as her metronome before the rest of the beat kicks in alongside her. The beat is a head-nodder and one that catches your ear with a new sound on each consecutive listen (It turns out that one minute songs are really easy to replay so go ahead and give this one a few listens then feel better for it). You’re likely to catch the drums and minimal tambourine but there’s also this whooshing sound that flows in and out of the track, one that almost seems to transport you to whatever studio this was recorded in.
Of course, Whack finds her footing within the unconventional production quite effortlessly, delivering an earworm of a chorus along with a quick, punchy verse. She doesn’t say much on this track other than that no one should mess with her, which has sort of been the point of just about every song here that’s had to do with a man who messed with her, so the message falls to the wayside a bit. We also see one of Whack’s best lines with “Go against me I’ll beat like Swizz” (a fun reference to producer Swizz Beats) before it’s supplanted by the ridiculously predictable “For the dough I go nuts, like Krispy Kreme” (another fun reference but not in a good way).
Sore Loser
3.5/5
Here we see Whack do her best Future impression as she details another relationship in which she was the heartbreaker. Despite the nature of the topic, Whack’s tone is stoic and unwavering as the beat ripples and runs like water around her. The juxtaposition of the chaotic beat with Whack’s collected voice assists in conveying how unbothered she is over this breakup, which is really made apparent by the harsh opening lines, “Keep calling my phone/Sh*t dead like a corpse.”
This track is a pretty big deviation from the eclectic sounds of the rest of the album. Whack flexes some more of her range as she trades her usual outlandish flow and lyricism for something more in line with today’s male trap rap artists. What’s different about Whack’s take on these sorts of cuts is that she’s not trying to be flashy about it. She opens by saying she simply grew bored of her relationship and by the end of the track she’s moved on to another man who’s caught her eye. She even takes a moment to poke fun at how men can be “way too flashy” on her way out. Whack might be using this song as commentary on male rappers' proclivity to flex their breakups or she might just be displaying her own player ways in a move that sets the table for her and her male competitors.
Dr. Suess
5 / 5
Whack continues to turn rap tropes on their head as she uses this beat, which most would save for a song written to some lost lover, and instead pairs it with a message to her peers who she feels have sold out. She backs this criticism up with one of the more unique tracks on the album as she pitches her vocals up and down with the song's progression. This is necessary to keep the intro/verse/ending format from feeling too formulaic as it’s used sporadically on the album. It also pulls the verse apart a bit, stretching it into something more sprawling than you’d think would fit within such a short song. Each line sort of bleeds into the next as the verse comes off as a stream of thoughts pouring out of Whack’s head, creating something much more unique than what those she’s criticizing usually put out.
It’s too bad that some of the early lines get drowned out in the high pitch that Whack starts out with because there are some cleverly written barbs towards her competitors there. She explains her issue with artists today as she says “Let me remind the elephant, must be hard to settle it, evident/You only cool when you hella bent” (“bent” generally meaning drunk; Whack doesn’t drink or smoke). If Whack is trying to separate herself from the rest of the field, she’s definitely done so by this point in the album.
Waze
3.3 / 5
Waze is more of an outro than an honest song with Whack staying quiet for a good portion of the beginning and ending. Before the album closes out, Whack reminds everyone that she has, and will continue to do everything on her own. While several other big names have included these sort of “credits” tracks at the end of their albums (Note to Self by J Cole and Hey Ma by Chance) to give thanks to those who’ve supported their creative process, Whack instead humorously takes the credit for herself here, saying “When I was sick ain’t nobody go to CVS” (Some might view this as a missed chance to display some humility but I feel that this is the type of mindset you need to go from homeless to rap star. I think she’s earned a pass here).
Waze should also be appreciated as the only real breather that we get on this short but raucous album. The bite-sized tracks make it almost a requirement to sit and listen to the whole album at once (it’s runtime is only three minutes longer than Kendrick’s song Sing About Me I’m Dying of Thirst, which clocks in at 12 minutes itself) but this track is the first time that we’re allowed to sit and digest the sampler platter Whack has set out for us here, one that’s likely to keep listeners returning to Whack World for quite some time.