After 2018′s ‘Whack World,’ Tierra Whack’s ‘World Wide Whack’ has finally arrived
The North Philly rapper and singer's new project is a collaboration with Philly visual artist Alex Da Corte. “I poured my all into it,” she says.
It’s been more than a minute since Tierra Whack made a major splash with Whack World, her 2018 collection of 15 attention-grabbing songs and videos, each clocking in at precisely 60 seconds.
But the North Philly rapper and singer’s story goes back further than that. She earned a Grammy nomination for “Mumbo Jumbo,” her 2017 track about a distressing dentist’s visit. And way back in 2011, when she was 16 and rapping as Dizzle Dizz, Whack had a first moment of viral fame when she wowed a film crew shooting a rap video on a North Philly street corner, with her freestyle skills.
In other words, fans have been waiting quite a while for World Wide Whack, the new 15-song, full-length project that comes out Friday. Whack has been waiting, too.
“It’s the album!,” she says excitedly, starting off a Monday morning interview about the project that’s a collaboration with Alex Da Corte, the Camden-born and Philly-based Venezuelan American visual artist. He designed the album’s visual elements and directed three videos, including one that features Whack as a Thanksgiving Day parade-style balloon floating above Philadelphia.
Whack’s chosen interview spot is the Yowie Hotel, the South Street boutique co-owned by Shannon Maldonado, whose eye-popping design sense meshes nicely with Whack’s.
Dressed in a pink Denim Tears sweater that matches her red hair, Balenciaga boots, and pink tooth gems, she’s gearing up for a busy release week. On Saturday, she’ll headline a showcase at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, that she also curated, bringing along Philly artists N3WYRKLA and Chioke.
“For Tierra, it’s important to to put Philly on her back,” says her manager, Johnny Montina. “She wants to emphasize the creativity and unity here in Philadelphia. Everywhere she goes, she talks about Philly.”
In the time between Whack World and World Wide Whack, Whack has been plenty busy. She released several singles, including “Dora,” her first team-up with Da Corte, in 2020. That year she also guested on Beyonce’s Black Is King.
In 2021, she put out three EPs that mocked the silliness of genre categories, entitled Rap?, R&B?, and Pop?. The latter dabbled in country with “Dolly.” (“I want do a whole album of bluegrass songs,” she says.)
But while she remained creative — including starring in the mind-bending quasi-documentary Cypher — Whack increasingly felt stuck. “I did feel pressure after Whack World,” she says. “Losing family members and friends. I had health issues. I couldn’t escape the storm.”
» READ MORE: Welcome to Tierra Whack’s ‘Whack World’: The North Philly rapper only needs 15 minutes of your time
On World Wide Whack, which was largely recorded in Philadelphia, deft rhymes often spell out dark concerns. “Keep my guard up, so you never get to know me,” she raps on “Mood Swings.” “Can’t trust a soul, so I stay lonely.”
“I had to go through being an artist and a public figure, a celebrity, for the first time,” she says. “I didn’t know how to balance the two. It caused me to shut down.”
Growing up in North Philly raised by her mother, Toni, a registered nurse, Whack dreamed of being Busta Rhymes and Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Erykah Badu. In Lauryn Hill, she found a role model. “Ooh, here’s this Black woman and she raps and sings? She does both?”
Her mother encouraged her, stopping the car and urging her to prove her mettle against the North Philly rappers she spotted on Oxford Street when Whack was 16. For her successful audition to be a vocal major at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School in Northeast Philly, she sang Alicia Keys’ “No One.”
Now, Keys is one of her best friends. And while that “is like a dream come true,” she says it’s also led to “impostor syndrome. And so much self-doubt.”
She’s also coped with grief. “I was losing my grandma. I had cousins and friends who were dying. Living in Philly, so many people I grew up with are either not here anymore, or in prison.”
To succeed, “I had to work my behind off. It’s like crabs in a barrel. It takes so much to be the one who gets out. Where I started, I wasn’t supposed to be where I am today. It wasn’t really written for me to be here.”
World Wide Whack can be playful about isolation: “When nobody’s there, you’re there for me,” she raps on “Imaginary Friends.” But it gets grim with “27 Club,” named after the age a disturbing number of musicians have died.
Whack, 28, wrote it last year, at a low point. “I was going to end it. Time to go. Get out of here,” she says. “I just didn’t feel like I loved myself anymore.”
She’s now in a far better place, she says. Therapy helped.
Whack calls herself “a simple girl.” She doesn’t drink or smoke, and “it doesn’t take much to make me happy.” She says she’s learned to take care of herself. “You have to pour back into you. I was pouring into so many people, and my cup was empty.”
She’s now working on “being a better friend, sister, aunt, daughter, cousin. Person. Artist. All around. So many people when they go through something, they just sulk in it. And that’s what I was doing. I was depressed.”
Among the friends whose support she treasures is Da Corte, a conceptual partner throughout World Wide Whack.
Da Corte became Whack-obsessed in 2018 when making trips from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to install his sculpture Rubber Pencil Devil at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
“Since it’s only 15 minute of music, I would just let [Whack World] play over and over on the 5½ hour drive.”
John Janick, head of Whack’s label, Interscope, is a Da Corte fan and connected the two. They clicked.
“I love her wordplay, and freestyle raps,” says Da Corte, 42.
“Alex is my twin,” says Whack. “I love him so much.” When she visited Da Corte’s studio in the Juniata section of Philadelphia, “I felt like a kid in Candyland.”
Da Corte — who has also collaborated with St. Vincent on her All Burn Screaming, due in April — and Whack share a flair for whimsy. So the World Wide Whack songs took the artist “by surprise because they were so grave. They were so serious.”
Together, they created three videos depicting a day in the life of World Wide Whack, described in album notes as “an all-seeing trickster and provocateur, a reflector of truths in the Yoruba tradition, and a Pierrot, the original sad clown in 17th century Italian theater.”
The story starts with optimism, as Whack compares herself to Whitney Houston and Britney Spears singing in the shower. Life gets heavier in “27 Club.” And in the clip for “Two Night,” which comes out next week, a gigantic digitally created Whack threatens to smother Philadelphia until fans bring her back down to earth.
Whack calls World Wide Whack “a character I created that’s me to the core” and says she identifies with the sad clown archetype.
Her hyper-active imagination shows up on songs like the new album’s “Chanel Pit,” in which she gets squeaky clean in a car wash. And she’s been rightly celebrated for rule-breaking ways and witty wordplay, earning comparisons to Missy Elliott and Eminem.
“I poured my all into it,” she says of the project. “I didn’t chase a sound, or hits. If that happens, that’s great. But each story comes from a personal experience. I feel like artists have a responsibility to be our true genuine self. You have to be 100% honest. I’m so proud of it.”