Oooooooh, was that the plan all along? Were these three EPs meant to be analysed together like this, so that when the ensuing blog post is titled that way it looks like a thinkpiece on what genre you could describe the revolutionary and eclectic output of one of modern music’s most interesting artists?
Well tough, that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m not falling for that trap, this ain’t ma’ first time at the rodeooooooo-whoah-oh. And there are few debates more pointless and boorish that “What genre is this?”. Who. Fucking. Cares? This is Tierra motherfucking Whack, son! If you like or rate music based on their genre, or even profess a preference for one particular style of music, you are an extraordinarily dull person and need to sit down.
Firstly though, yeah, this isn’t an album at all. These three ostensibly genre based EPs were released over successive weeks last December, are perhaps never intended to be heard together, and certainly weren’t intended as an album. However, I’m desperate for Tierra’s proper follow-up to 2018’s astonishing Whack World, so if this is as good as it gets so be it. Secondly, as a concept is doesn’t really work at all – the ‘Pop?’ EP is often more country and western in places; the ‘Rap?’ selection does sound like rap, I guess, but largely because Tierra is a rapper, and there doesn’t seem to be any wider commentary or response to any particular rap movements or genres; and ‘R&B?’ does kind of include the more soulful cuts, but not distinctively enough to really mark them out as any proper genre experiment – but to discuss that would be to get pulled into that braindead genre discussion that I swore I would never do!!
If we were to judge it instead on merely its actual contents – y’know, like they used to in the olden days – then we’d have to say that ‘Pop?/Rap?/R&B?’ is… good?
It’s actually excellent, of course, and contains much of Tierra’s best music to date. Compared to the utter shredding up and reassembling of the very form that ‘Whack World‘ was it of course is always going to feel comparatively lightweight and disposable, but maybe that’s all it was meant to be in the first place, it was *you* who made this into an album, Alex, you utter imbecile! As a stopgap between album… it’s extremely good… That’s all it is, right?
I kinda hope that it is, as despite some absolute stonkers there are some tracks on these three EPs that you wonder have enough ideas within them to justify getting one minute on ‘Whack World’. If this is just a stopgap then I can hope and imagine her actual followup will be far… better?? But am I just expecting too much?? Is any Tierra Whack song merely being an extremely good traditional track inevitably going to sound disappointing when you know what she’s capable of??
Man, my head hurts…
Yep, there’s all three of them…
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