Rapper Tierra Whack remixes music documentaries with Hulu’s “Cypher”

The primary quarter-hour of rapper Tierra Whack’s movie Cypher has all of the makings of a standard music documentary.

We’re given the backstory of how Whack went from writing and performing poems in class to the beginnings of her hip-hop profession after a video of her freestyling on the streets in her hometown of Philadelphia went viral. We see Whack’s fast ascension within the trade with main artists equivalent to Rihanna, Meek Mill, and Billie Eilish cosigning her skills, in addition to the discharge of 2018’s Whack World, her debut album with 15 one-minute tracks and spellbinding visuals that seize her distinctive artistry.

Cypher, at the moment streaming on Hulu, units up Whack’s early years with an eye fixed towards the place she plans to take her profession subsequent. Nevertheless, the “documentary” takes a tough left flip when Whack is approached by a stalker who warns her that an Illuminati-like group is out to make use of her musical items for nefarious causes.

And so begins a sequence of unsettling occasions which will have the viewers asking, What precisely is Cypher all about?

In recent times, we’ve seen the discharge of a slew of music documentaries, together with Billie Eilish’s The World’s a Little Blurry, Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana, Olivia Rodrigo’s Driving House 2 U, and lots of others. Cypher, written and directed by Chris Moukarbel (Gaga: 5 Foot Two; Banksy Does New York), has been described as a fictional pseudo-music documentary, subverting what we’ve come to count on from an intimate, behind-the-scenes take a look at an artist’s life to create a commentary on trendy movie star tradition.

“I used to be nervous loads to start with as a result of it’s my first time performing with a script,” Whack says. “Chris [Moukarbel] was like, ‘I requested you to do that as a result of I would like you to be you, so no matter feels proper to you that’s what we would like.’ And that’s what I did. We had been impressed by The Blair Witch Venture—typically issues would occur that we didn’t plan however then we’d simply go together with it.”

Moukarbel had a basic thought of what he wished Cypher to be however was searching for the correct artist to collaborate with. He linked with Whack in 2019, a yr after she dropped her debut album, and shortly discovered his “excellent accomplice.”

“She’s the type of artist who likes to mess with style and go on a creative journey—and that’s what this undertaking meant for me in a whole lot of methods,” Moukarbel says. “It’s enjoying with the standard format of a music documentary, which has turn into extraordinarily well-liked the previous few years, the place we get to bait and change [audiences].”

Cypher reimagines the music documentary as a way of spotlighting cynicism throughout the music trade, the pervasiveness of movie star tradition, and the rising perception in conspiracy theories. In response to a study printed in 2022, roughly 59% of People agree that persons are extra more likely to imagine conspiracy theories in comparison with 25 years in the past. However as you would possibly’ve guessed by now, unraveling conspiracy theories in Cypher is way from easy.

“I like issues to have an ambiguity. I did need it to really feel like not solely was Tierra probably a part of one thing larger, however that she was probably pulling the strings,” Moukarbel says. “I preferred the concept she was probably manipulating me and the movie manufacturing into making one thing that helped her obtain her final purpose, which was to ascend inside this secret society.”

Artists together with Beyoncé, Katy Perry, and Ariana Grande have used documentaries and live performance movies to offer their followers in-depth entry to their inventive course of and who they’re outdoors of their career. In Cypher, there are glimpses of fact into Whack’s life and profession. And the truth that stated fact is delivered as an experimental “documentary” says extra about Whack’s creativity as an artist than any behind-the-scenes movie of a live performance or music video might.

“Traditionally, documentaries had been handled like journalism. We’ve discovered that not solely had been they not that, however they don’t need to be that. I feel which you could inform a real story that isn’t essentially concerning the actuality that’s on the display screen in the way in which that fiction does, even when what you’re seeing isn’t literal,” Moukarbel says. “Individuals are searching for the aesthetic of realism and the aesthetic of fact.”

Whack has established herself as a genre-bending artist, one who can’t be constrained to a single fashion or aesthetic, and it definitely exhibits in her music and storytelling. To that finish, Whack notes that she needs to proceed pushing the boundaries of her artistry to forge her personal lane in music and past.  

“I don’t slot in wherever,” she says. “I simply wish to proceed to problem myself day by day. I by no means wish to get snug as a result of being snug is boring. I’m at all times searching for a brand new journey, a brand new activity, one thing to deal with, and it simply retains me rising and retains me hungry. . . . On the similar time it retains me humble as a result of I’m studying new issues.”