Album Review: Whack World
In my most recent review of Snubnose by GRIP (shoutout pt.2, check it out!), I touched on how I appreciate hearing stories, seeing artistic qualities shine through, and how that elevates hip-hop/rap in my opinion. Well, another perfect example of such a record is Tierra Whack’s Whack World. If you don’t know Tierra already, she was a 2019 XXL Freshman Class pick, and she definitely was making some waves when she released Whack World back in 2018.
In true artistic form, she released a 15 song album that ran for exactly 15 minutes, each song around 1 minute long. It was released as a full video, which links the songs and tells a visual story in itself, as it brings you through an autobiographical, metaphorical recreation of meaningful emotions and events in her life. While the video itself is visually stunning, the more important aspect of it is the music. The rapping and the production itself is well-done with high quality beats. It is pleasant and clean sounding. The poetic lyricism is intelligent, not all a generic flex like a lot of other rap (not to say that is a bad thing, some rap songs are just full flex, but exhibit clever wordplay as well.) While it’s difficult to fit good wordplay or symbolism into songs as short as these songs, Tierra shows that’s still possible.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTebhPy04g
Though artistically this album is worth great praise and the tracks are interesting listens, I personally find that it’s not really worth it unless you’re watching the whole video in one sitting, the songs sort of fade into each other and are too short to be worth listening to on their own. I would have to give this album a 7/10, not because I think it’s bad or anything, it’s truly unique, but it’s just not very replayable, it’s almost in itself a video project that I could lump with the likes of “Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared” more than it is a traditional music project to be consumed repetitively. To her credit, this video may entice viewers to get more into some of her other work and future music projects, which is the silver lining of how short it is. Whack World is streamable on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great day!