But the playfulness takes a backseat to the rawness, which she eases into on album opener, “Mood Swings” when she hints at what’s yet to be revealed, singing, “Might look familiar, but I promise you don’t know me.” On the downward spiral of “Numb,” she gestures towards self-harm (“Long sleeves cover scars”) and suicidal ideation (“To the bridge in my car, now I’m swimming with the sharks”) before finally calling out anxiety and depression by name. And that’s only four songs in. “Imaginary Friends,” “Difficult” and “Two Night” wade deeper into the muck of these knotty feelings, how they affect relationships and daily life. By “Two Night” she’s found some comfort in gallows humor, adding a cheeky postscript to a hypothetical suicide note (“I didn’t pay the light bill this month”) and divulging that, because she’s Black, her last meal will probably be chicken and fries. Her quips are hilarious, devastating, and provocative, but when the rest of her writing isn’t as sharp, these moments of vulnerability can feel heavy-handed.
The darkness becomes pitch black by the album’s closer, “27 Club,” a song Whack says is inspired by the Mary Jane Girls’ 1983 R&B ballad “You Are My Heaven.” It’s jarring at first to hear the word “suicide” repeated like a chant, but it becomes clear that the purpose of the repetition is not to sanction the act but rather to release Whack from its hold. In an interview with Vulture, she revealed that when she started recording the song she didn’t know what it would be about. “But it came so easy,” she said. “I cried, and I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been trying to say.’”
This vulnerability World Wide Whack puts on display is truly affecting, but for a convention-busting artist as Whack, her directness feels strikingly ordinary. The unbound creativity that she displayed in just 15 minutes of Whack World—and that often bursts through on her Instagram freestyles—is reined in here. It’s not that she can’t make longer songs or open up about her struggles, but her endless reinvention made her so thrilling as an artist. It’s one thing to strip away the artifice and speak from the heart, but the beauty of letting go is the space it creates for new things to come in. For much of World Wide Whack, even when wearing new shoes and showing different sides of herself, she’s still treading on familiar ground.
Anyone in need of help can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255 or SuicidePreventionLifeline.org to chat with someone online.
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