Most pop stars keep their fans at arm’s length, occasionally deigning to an awkward meet-and-greet but otherwise maintaining a distance. Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack, on the other hand, has dressed up as a wordsearch at this sold-out London gig, and has invited members of the audience to find words on her using a marker pen, having spun them around to make them dizzy. This follows the outfit she posted on Instagram earlier in the day: an oversized custom Rugrats sweater featuring giant drooping hands at the ends of the sleeves. An upturned Whack-branded van lies outside the venue, potatoes spilling out of it in an enigmatic tableau.
By delivering this zany charisma totally deadpan, she has become the most refreshing and brilliant new voice in rap. Her 2018 album Whack World was 15 tracks, each exactly a minute long, and these miniatures are received with joy. Whack inverts the energy of each: the mournful 4 Wings gets chanted in a steroidally masculine manner, while she becomes cartoonish and animated for Cable Guy, trading its ad-libs (“Bitches eat tacos!”) with her DJ Zach Whack, a skinny, tattooed white guy with whom she has charming odd-couple affection. Less euphorically received but no less strong are recent longform singles, which she has the mic stamina for.
Like a standup comedian, she finds existential weight in her silliness. Wrong-footing the audience with a call and response game of “whack” and “quack”, she tells us: “You lost. It’s a game. Life’s a game.” During a climactic airing of Hungry Hippo, she stage-dives, becoming a blur of letters. Per that song’s lyrics, she’s not your average girl.
