Tierra Whack

BIOGRAPHY

Tierra Helena Whack was born August 11, 1995, and grew up in North Philadelphia with her mother and two younger siblings. An introverted child who loved Dr. Seuss and used writing to work through insecurities, she began performing as a teenager under the name "Dizzle Dizz" before returning to her birth name in 2017. A 2011 freestyle video for the Philadelphia collective We Run the Streets first earned her an audience. Her 2018 debut mixtape Whack World, fifteen tracks each exactly one minute long with accompanying short films, earned a Pitchfork Best New Music nod and an A-minus from Robert Christgau. The 2017 single "Mumbo Jumbo," performed with an exaggerated mouth prop, picked up a Grammy nomination for Best Music Video. She has since collaborated with Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Tyler, the Creator, Chief Keef and Melanie Martinez, charted with "T.D" alongside Lil Yachty, ASAP Rocky and Tyler, the Creator, and released the 2024 concept album World Wide Whack with visuals by Alex Da Corte.

WHY THEY'RE COOL

Whack built her reputation on radical brevity and visual imagination, compressing full pop, rap and soul ideas into sixty-second bursts on Whack World, each paired with its own short film. Critics have dubbed her the "Missy Elliott" of her generation for the inventiveness of her videos and her position as a rare mainstream showcase for a darker-skinned woman in rap. From the deliberately unintelligible wordplay of "Mumbo Jumbo" to the theatrical alter ego at the center of World Wide Whack, she treats format itself as a creative tool, rarely repeating the same trick twice.

GEORGE'S PLAYS

First time on the station.

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