Tierra Helena Whack is an American rapper, singer-songwriter born August 11, 1995. Hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tierra has been active in the music scene since 2011. As a teenager, she used the stage name ‘Dizzle Dizz’, until eventually using her birth name in 2017.
Tierra Whack, in simple words, is an unorthodox rapper who has an incredible talent for romanticizing the weird and wonderful in her music. She started writing poetry at a young age, eventually growing skill for the spoken word. She attended The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush for three years with a major in Vocals and a minor in Fine arts. Tierra’s music videos often feature disturbing, vibrant and hilarious imagery coupled with a speedy, sometimes unintelligible delivery. She admits that she has a sick sense of humor, which evidently seems to contribute to the wacky nature of her music overall.
Tierra finished high school in Atlanta, Georgia, and eventually returned to her home state Philadelphia in 2015. This is where she connected with her past collaborator, sound engineer Kenete Simms. The pair continued working together while still underground, with Tierra releasing multiple singles as well as reverting back to her birth name, no longer using the moniker ‘Dizzy Dizz’. Popular singles (released in 2017) include ‘S*** happens’ and ‘MUMBO JUMBO’, the latter being one of her most popular songs of the year despite having nearly unintelligible lyrics. The track essentially demonstrates commercial mumble rap, but with Tierra’s very own flair.
With many singles to her name, May 2018 marked the release of Tierra’s first full body of work, ‘Whack World’. The 15 track album featured songs that were all no longer than a minute in length, embodying an elaborate form of art. Tierra knew the visual ideas she was trying to emulate through each song eventually becoming the official music videos for the tracks themselves. ‘Whack World’s song length was intended to keep each track under Instagram’s one-minute video limit, but ultimately plays out as one long video. Overall the album received critical acclaim from critics such as Billboard and Complex etc. and was named one of the best albums of the year. Tierra also got the opportunity to perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival, a stage which saw many famous artists before her. Tierra even finished the year with a Grammy nomination for her track ‘MUMBO JUMBO’ for best music video award further proving the impact of her outrageous yet artistic imagery.
