Tierra Whack – WORLD WIDE WHACK (Album Review)

In the Philadelphia rapper’s official debut album ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’, the talented Tierra Whack offers a 15 track album of songs mostly 3 minutes or less in a fast moving and ever-changing musical soundscape. No stranger to short tracks with versatile styles, Tierra’s experimental concept project of 2018 ‘Whack World’ similarly was a 15 track album this time of songs 1 minute or less with, again, Tierra exploring different styles and genres in a fast moving tracklist of various themes.

With Tierra establishing her sound and image over the past seven years with various EPs, singles, and concept projects, she has shown her ability to incorporate the nonsensical in lyricism, delivery, and instrumentation in a way that offers some impactful subtext and originality. Whether Tierra was showing her ability to offer soulful performances, hard hitting rap, or country-like singsong styles, Tierra showed her talent to shape shift her style in original, unexpected, and absurd ways that was able to standout while appealing to the masses.

With anticipation slowly building over the past several years as her original songs showed her absurdity and freshness as well as her features with established performers such as with Tyler, the Creator, Beyonce, Childish Gambino, Lil Yachty, and Melanie Martinez continued to show her versatility and ability to collaborate with others, by the time ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’ was released, the anticipation was at an high.

With Tierra’s first single for the album, Chanel Pit, offering absurd instrumentation, lyricism, and flow, it seemed as if Tierra was going to be following the route she had established over the past seven years. It wasn’t until her new single, Shower Song, that some doubt began to shroud the debut release.

While the instrumentation was impressive and well constructed and the chorus was catchy, the song itself felt a bit pointless and lacked the double entendre of her previous releases and was a mostly forgettable release. Her final single, 27 Club, once again offered the traditional depth of Tierra’s meaning with a song lyrically alluding to death and mental health while additionally offering a fresh and unserious flow and feel. While the singles were inconsistent ranging from mediocre to good, the possibility of the album being lackluster became more and more apparent. With that being said, here are my thoughts; I am disappointed.

As a Tierra Whack fan for the past seven years, I was excited to see what would be done for her official debut given her aforementioned track record but unfortunately, Tierra seems to have lost a bit of sense of what paved the road for her to get to this point. While her original tracks/EPs were odd, fun, versatile, and unlike anything else in the mainstream hip-hop soundscape, ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’ sounds like her attempt to adhere to the typical trends of the hip-hop/neo-soul spectrum.

With nonsensical lyrics masking, this time, some basic themes of money, prowess, and ability and other times, intentionally absurd lyrics for no reason other than to be silly goofy, it is hard to distinguish the point sometimes of some of these tracks. While ‘Whack World’ had a mixture of nonsensical lyrics with meaning and nonsensical lyrics with no subtext, the latter was paired with Tierra exploring a new genre/sound/style different from her then catalog while leaning heavily into the absurdity and fun of it. In ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’, Tierra never fully leans into the absurdity of the lyricism as she has in the past and, when she does, it lacks the subtext or the exploration of new sounds and, instead, finds Tierra replicating similar sounds of the genres with generic trap, soul, and synth. In a sense, the tracks mostly lacked the originality and personality Tierra exhibited in other projects.

To highlight some of the positives, the instrumentals are mostly well produced and do offer some occasionally fun, absurd, and wonky moments cohesive to the catalog of Tierra. As for her performance, Tierra does a consistently solid job of rapping/singing with different styles, accents, and cadences that whether or not they land, are fun, different, and fresh. With that being said, Tierra never truly pops off vocally on the album, never offering a hard-delivered rap verse or a powerhouse vocal soul chorus and plays it fairly middle lane for the duration.

For first-time listeners of ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’, there might not be as many gripes/hangups on the project if a sound like Tierra is new to you; while this isn’t the best example of her ability, Tierra is still an incredibly unique, talented, and fresh artist that has a lot to offer still. If you like Tierra Whack and ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’, you might also like Teezo Touchdown, Jordan Ward and/or DRAM.

Rating/Mediocre – ‘WORLD WIDE WHACK’ is a quick and absurd journey into the nonsensical and bumpy soundscape of Tierra Whack. While sometimes fresh, fun, and effective, the album mostly is unoriginally and boringly absurd without depth and, at other times, is trying to mould into the archetypes of the genres which further loses her essence. With some solid vocals and instrumentals coming and going throughout, Tierra’s debut is not the culmination of her past seven years of EPs/singles that we had hoped it would be and instead is a disappointment to fans and another mixed release of a pop rap/rap/neo-soul album.

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]