Somebody’s Watching Me
Streaming and in theaters on November 24, the Hulu documentary chronicles the rapper’s rise to fame and her adjustment to the spotlight
If Tierra Whack didn’t want to be seen, she wouldn’t have made an entire documentary chronicling her rise to fame. But as Cypher will detail upon its Nov. 24 release on Hulu and in select theaters, fame requires adjustment and balance, and with that comes a type of visibility that she has far less control over.
In the official trailer for the Chris Moukarbel-directed film, paranoia surrounds Whack. “All pop culture is a form of mind control,” one commentator states in the clip. “Maybe it’s not all evil, but it’s incepting someone’s brain.”
For Whack, the tension around this idea rose almost as quickly as her acclaim did. When the early days of her career are recalled, spanning on-the-street freestyles and viral videos, there’s an air of excitement that seems to dissipate the further the rapper gets to the top.
“You never truly know who’s watching you,” a male voice says towards the end of the trailer as the video cuts from Whack on-set at various video shoots to the blaring of police sirens.
“Tierra Whack rose to fame rapping on a Philadelphia Street for a YouTube channel,” a synopsis for the documentary reads. “Years later, while documenting her astronomical rise, questions arise about who is filming whom and whether being seen is a desirable and unavoidable part of fame.”
In 2019, Whack appeared in Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians package in conversation with Talking Heads founder David Byrne, explaining her reluctance to fully enter the spotlight. “I started off really shy too. Even now, before I go on, my anxieties are bad,” she said at the time. “Then I get onstage and turn into a different person. I get off, I’m just, “Oh, my God, what did I just do?” It’s a roller coaster.”