When I tell Tierra Whack over Zoom that I’m spending my summer close to her hometown of Philadelphia — where she’s currently spending time — she has one question.
“You got any good food spots you’d like to go to here or no?”
She had a whirlwind spring that included a critically acclaimed debut album in World Wide Whack, what NPR suspects is “one of the best Tiny Desks in history,” complete with an appearance from the Philadelphia Phillies’ beloved mascot the Phillie Phanatic, and revealing a serious battle with depression that she had finally won. This summer, among other things, she’s at home, eating.
I tell her I was actually going to ask her for some restaurant recommendations, and she excitedly lists places like Spruce Street Harbor, where you can stroll and stop by various food vendors; Kalaya, a gorgeous Southern Thai spot that packs a lot of heat; Youma, a West African restaurant where she loves the “crazy red snapper” and brown rice; and Mamajuana, a Latin fusion cafe “right across the street from the casino.” She beams brightest about Pod, raving about their seafood and sushi. “You’ll love the interior,” she tells me. “It’s futuristic. It feels like you’re in Japan.”
On “Moovies,” a lovelorn track on World Wide Whack, she chides a boy for romance, telling him, “Take me to eat, I’m a foodie.” Turns out she really is, I mention. She says she just needed a word that rhymes with “movie,” but she’s realizing it’s true: “I live this. I live it. It’s me.”
The album’s Technicolor fanfare, including three wacky music videos, is expertly curated to be delightful and devastating. On “27 Club,” she’s quite plain about being suicidal at that age. Luckily, she’s 28 now. Recently, in an Instagram video, she explained how Pinterest helped her create the album’s elaborate world, pulling from eclectic sources like vintage ads for Pop Rocks, Garbage Pail Kids, and Nintendo. As a brand partner, she showed off her personal World Wide Whack Pinterest board and the fact that the site now has its own Board Sharing feature to make collaboration and observation more seamless. “Everything is cohesive and smooth,” Whack says of the addition. “Everybody wants to have a cool aesthetic and they want you to see their interests, so it just makes sense for us to be able to share it. I think it is long overdue, honestly.”
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This isn’t simply Whack collecting a check from a corporation, it seems: “I’ve had Pinterest for 10 years,” she tells me. “Thank God for ‘Forgot password’ — I’ve kept the same email.” Pinterest is her go-to for hoarding bits of inspiration. “I’m in the studio and I’m just like, ‘Yo, let me open up my Pinterest account because I have so much cool stuff saved on here.’ It’s like a filing cabinet, man.”
This summer, her creativity is taking a new shape, literally, as she hones in on a new hobby that she divulges here. She also lets us in on the classic beat she’s dying to rap on, why her life was just like Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, feeling connected to Nina Simone and Tina Turner, and what her mental health is like these days.
How do your Pinterest boards eventually show up in your real life?
It just keeps things in order for me. I’m literally organized chaos. I may have an image saved from four years ago, and tomorrow I go in the studio and I finally use that image. If I’m going into a room and I got a meeting or something, I’m like, “Let me pull up my Pinterest account. Let me just make sure I look at it.” Because then I’ll see images [and be] like “Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention this.” I had a meeting with a sneaker company and … Johnny [her manager], can I say who it was?
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[Johnny says yes]
I had a meeting with Adidas a while ago, and in the meeting I was just scrolling through my Pinterest and I had tons of classic Adidas saved. Like, “Yo, I really want this.” It was just cool. Like I said, I was just able to go back. It’s like my PowerPoint. I can scroll and I can tell you what I was thinking when I saw [something] or what I want to do.
So imagery can influence the way that you rap too?
Yeah, for sure. Sometimes I’ll just look at paintings or pictures and I’m just like, “I can make a song based off how this picture makes me feel.” We all have synesthesia. I could just see certain things, and there’s a light bulb that goes off and I’m like, “Ooh, this makes me feel like this. So I got to translate it through music.”
It sounds like you’re in pretty good spirits. Some of the themes of World Wide Whack were really heavy. How have you been doing since that album came out?
I’ve been great, actually. I’m proud of myself. I’ve been really good. I’ve been staying in the gym with my friends. We’ve been playing basketball, hooping. Staying active and just trying to stay creative. And I’ve been eating good. Hanging out, getting some sun. I think I’m going to go to the beach this weekend. I’m going to try to go to the beach.
What beaches do you like?
I love Asbury Park so much. Their beach is fire. Good boardwalk, good food, good vibes. Hotels are really nice. That’s the only one I’ll give up. But if you’re just driving in the area, there’s so many private beaches — small, nice beaches — that are cool.
What kind of creative projects are you up to this summer?
I’m just really trying to get into designing. I’ve been sketching a lot on my iPad, and I’m trying to take it to the next level. I want to do furniture and home decor. I’m just having fun, and I’m not thinking about it too much. I’m just hoping that the universe is listening and watching. On Pinterest, though, I have so much cool furniture saved. You could just scroll and you see a pattern and you’re like, “Damn, I have all of this.” And then it kind of makes you get to know yourself better. It kind of raises an eyebrow. Like, “Well maybe this is an interest that I have. Maybe I need to take this further and really dig deep and figure out what this is to scratch this itch.” … or itch this scratch. No, scratch this itch.
You had it right the first time. I was curious about a few specific things on your board. You’ve got a Sister Act 2 poster with Whoopi Goldberg. Tell me what that represents.
That movie really … It changed my life. I technically lived that life. I remember when I was in seventh grade and I was trying to figure out what high school I was going to go to. Was I just going to go to the neighborhood high school or was I going to actually go to a special admissions’ art school? And I was like, “You know what? I’m going to take that hour ride out every day, and I’m going to try to really just follow my dreams of being a performer.” So I went to the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush [High School]. I had to audition to get in. I was a vocal major. And then, I think it was the junior year, we actually got to perform Sister Act 2. We did two of the songs. “Joyful, Joyful” and “Oh, Happy Day.” It was like I was living the movie. I felt like Lauryn Hill. I got to do the rap part too: [with emphasis] “Joyful, joyful, Lord, we adore thee!” I was the only rapper in school, so it was cool. It was all white kids.
And the What Happened, Miss Simone? movie poster. Tell me about why that’s there.
Listen, I cried watching that. That’s one of my favorite documentaries. It’ll be that and then the Tina Turner documentary on Max, where she got to tell her story. Nina Simone and Tina Turner, they have my heart. Nina, I didn’t know everything that she went through. It’s so crazy because I just didn’t even know that I knew so much of her music, with somebody like Kanye [West] who’s been sampling [her]. To really get to learn her story, I was like, “Wow.” I felt a connection. She just was so talented, and she was a trailblazer and an activist. Whatever she felt, she stood on it. Just as a Black woman, I’m like, “Yo, I strive to be like that. I want to be like Nina Simone.”
And do you feel similarly about Tina Turner after watching her documentary too?
Yes. What’s Love Got to Do with It? I’ve seen that movie a million times. It was so crazy because Angela Bassett did that role so good that I thought she was Tina Turner when I was a kid. But Tina said they told her what actually happened to her, the things that were happening to her [were] too much for TV. They wrote it how they wanted to write it. You can’t … A tear just came out of my eye. That cooked me.
“Proud Mary” is one of my favorite songs. “Help!” is my favorite though. You got to listen to the lyrics in that song. It helped me through a really tough time. Something really resonated with me when I watched her tell her own story.
Did you have people, after World Wide Whack came out, be like, “Yo, this reminded me of my depression or my suicidality”?
I had a Whack’s Wild Wig Party. It was WWW. Had a Wild Wig Party in Philly, and a fan came up and she was like, “Yo, this changed my life.” And she just cried in my arms for 10 minutes. We were just in the middle of the party. Everybody was turnt up. It was like, “Knuck If You Buck” was on. I was standing in the middle of the crowd just holding her. Tears started coming out of her eyes. I was like, “What?” And yeah. She’s like, “You changed my life. That project changed my life.”
That’s amazing. Do you remember what kind of wig she had on?
It was hard to focus. It was so many wild wigs. Yo, you would have fun. I got to have another party. Yo, I should. Johnny? We got to make it happen. Yo, we got to do something with Pinterest!
Then the last thing on the board that I want to ask you about, even though there are a million really cool things on it, is the Vibe magazine cover “Rap Reigns,” and it has Lil Kim, Lauryn Hill, Missy, and Foxy Brown. Tell me about that.
That might be my favorite cover of all time, because that just brings me back to a time when it was possible for everybody to get along. We got to get back to that. Everybody’s beefing and stuff, and I’m just like, yo, why can’t we just be on this? We all have our own lane and different sounds. I don’t understand that. The beef is unnecessary.
That’s an interesting observation because it feels like there was a period in time recently where things seemed like there was some tension in different places in rap with women. But I feel like this summer, especially, a lot of the rap girls are really linking up. You see so many different women rappers on Megan’s tour.
It’s starting to happen. Yeah. But it is just like, that’s just something that I always come back to. Like “Yo, let’s stay on this. Let’s get back to this.”
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Do you have a favorite Rolling Stone cover?
Yeah, mine. Digital cover. Me and [Lil] Yachty. And me and Yachty are really friends, so that was good.
I was going to wrap with just one more question and then I’ll let you go because it’s a beautiful summer day. I want to know if you’ve been freestyling to anything. Is there a song or beat that’s caught your ear?
Did you see the viral video with Common, Black Thought, and Freeway? I think it’s the “4,3,2,1” by LL Cool J beat. I’ve been listening to that beat. Yo, look that up on Twitter or something. It’s Common, Freeway, Black Thought, Method Man, [and Redman]. It’s the hardest beat I ever heard in my life. I keep listening to it. I got to write something to it.
