On her 2018 short-film-as-album Whack World, Tierra Whack introduced the world to a cartoon version of herself. Her grief, romance, and existential crises were simplified and exaggerated into bite-sized rap songs with bold visuals that were part Adult Swim, part Pee-wee’s Playhouse. She didn’t shy away from pain but transmuted it into things like dogs and chicken wings. Reflected through her prismatic lens, her interior world felt surreal, and entirely her own. In contrast, the pain coursing through World Wide Whack feels like a real-life remake of the original animated movie. The record’s extended runtime allows a deeper look into Whack’s head as she tackles depression and anxiety in a straightforward, moving, and darkly funny way. But while her commitment to simplicity lends itself to a big emotional catharsis, you can’t help but feel some of her music has lost some of its color.
Fragments of Whack World can be found in the production, which is spare but encompasses a wide range of genres, from Atlanta trap to Casio-preset funk to pop ballads to her signature singsongy nursery rap. The spaciousness and austerity of the beats allow Whack’s voice to take the spotlight. She has a lot of fun modulating her pitch, tone, and accent like she’s a teenager playing dress-up at the mall. On “Chanel Pit” alone, she shifts between staccato and vibrato singing, explosive bursts in the verse and cool restraint in the chorus. As much as World Wide Whack aims to be still and real, there is still much character in her delivery.
Even though the songs are epics by Whack standards—almost every song still clocks in under three minutes—this album shares some of Whack World’s ephemerality in the sheer randomness of cuts like “Shower Song,” which does what it says on the tin (“Soap and water give me powers”), and “Moovies,” a disarmingly simple track about wanting to be treated to dinner and a show. The songs are fun, but they feel less exploratory and more like a concession to the market of likes and “For-You” pages. She’s at her most magnetic when she loosens her grip on her idiosyncrasies and tries on other people’s flows, like when she adds a little Ice Spice flippancy to a relationship post-mortem on “X” (“Just like a website, he beggin’ to link, I went to his house and sofa was stink”) or channels throwback Migos, ad-libs and all, on “Snake Eyes.”
But the playfulness takes a backseat to the rawness, which she eases into on album opener, “Mood Swings” when she hints at what’s yet to be revealed, singing, “Might look familiar, but I promise you don’t know me.” On the downward spiral of “Numb,” she gestures towards self-harm (“Long sleeves cover scars”) and suicidal ideation (“To the bridge in my car, now I’m swimming with the sharks”) before finally calling out anxiety and depression by name. And that’s only four songs in. “Imaginary Friends,” “Difficult” and “Two Night” wade deeper into the muck of these knotty feelings, how they affect relationships and daily life. By “Two Night” she’s found some comfort in gallows humor, adding a cheeky postscript to a hypothetical suicide note (“I didn’t pay the light bill this month”) and divulging that, because she’s Black, her last meal will probably be chicken and fries. Her quips are hilarious, devastating, and provocative, but when the rest of her writing isn’t as sharp, these moments of vulnerability can feel heavy-handed.
The darkness becomes pitch black by the album’s closer, “27 Club,” a song Whack says is inspired by the Mary Jane Girls’ 1983 R&B ballad “You Are My Heaven.” It’s jarring at first to hear the word “suicide” repeated like a chant, but it becomes clear that the purpose of the repetition is not to sanction the act but rather to release Whack from its hold. In an interview with Vulture, she revealed that when she started recording the song she didn’t know what it would be about. “But it came so easy,” she said. “I cried, and I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been trying to say.’”
This vulnerability World Wide Whack puts on display is truly affecting, but for a convention-busting artist as Whack, her directness feels strikingly ordinary. The unbound creativity that she displayed in just 15 minutes of Whack World—and that often bursts through on her Instagram freestyles—is reined in here. It’s not that she can’t make longer songs or open up about her struggles, but her endless reinvention made her so thrilling as an artist. It’s one thing to strip away the artifice and speak from the heart, but the beauty of letting go is the space it creates for new things to come in. For much of World Wide Whack, even when wearing new shoes and showing different sides of herself, she’s still treading on familiar ground.
Anyone in need of help can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255 or SuicidePreventionLifeline.org to chat with someone online.
