SHOWS // Tierra Whack @ Red Bull Music Festival

Post by Rosalie

I strongly believe that the best way to experience Tierra Whack’s music is while looking at yourself in the mirror. It’s empowering to blast lyrics like “Don’t worry ’bout me, I’m doing good, I’m doing great alright” and sing them to yourself. 

Now, imagine how hyped I got when the Philadelphia-raised rapper opened her set at Red Bull Music Festival at Pink Motel in LA by running out on stage holding up a full-length mirror to the crowd.

“I brought a mirror so you could see yourself, because you look so fucking good!”

Tierra Whack is your daily mirror affirmation in living color, and by color I mean a big-bird-yellow coat and baggy rainbow sweater. The only way to describe her set is as an extremely aggressive 15 minutes of guided self-love.

With each song clocking in at one minute, Tierra flung continuous flows of positive self-talk into the mic, almost performing ‘Whack World’ in its entirety. Which, truthfully isn’t difficult given the brevity of the album and each song. The setlist smartly reorders the tracks in a way that serves the energy of a live show.

Toe Jam
Bugs Life
Pretty Ugly
4 Wings
Cable Guy
Sore Loser
Fuck Off
Pet Cemetery
Fruit Salad
Hookers
Hungry Hippo
Black Nails (encore)

Four songs excluded from the list were “Flea Market”, “Silly Sam”, “Dr. Seuss”, and “Waze” in favor of earlier track “Toe Jam” (I mean, who doesn’t want to jump around yelling “Crack kills, if it don’t getcha Whack will”?) and time for stage banter with her DJ (Zach) as off-kilter and wonderful as the visual portion of her album. One moment of note:

Zach: Yo, Whack, what are you doing? (Music stops)Whack: *Unwrapping her leg from around a photographer on stage* I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That got weird.

Tierra the boss also demanded that we sing the “Happy Birthday” song to some random people in the pit who were celebrating.

If this is Whack’s World as a 15-minute festival set, we should all be eager to see what happens once she has complete creative control and a captive audience.