After nabbing the 2023 Tribeca Festival’s Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Tierra Whack‘s Cypher is now seeing a global release. Cypher provides a never-before-seen first look into the enigmatic rapper’s career trajectory, following Whack’s journey as she ventures from the streets of the Philadelphia rap scene to well-deserved viral status, grappling with the morality of fame along the way.
“We’re starting to shoot and I’m so happy because we’re locked in finally, but you could die, I could die, and then we can’t shoot anymore,” Whack straightforwardly says to the camera at the opening. One of the realest and most authentic rappers in the game, Cypher watches as Whack builds her career herself from the ground up, with humble beginnings competing in Philly’s local battle rap circuit. “I think sometimes I just can’t believe that this is all happening for me.”
As Cypher‘s logline indicates, the film not only “chronicles the rapper’s rise to fame”, but “delves into a series of increasingly unsettling events that swirl around Tierra and her team, leading Tierra to question whether being seen (or watched) is a desirable and unavoidable part of fame.”
“Tierra, do you really know where your thoughts come from?” an offscreen voice asks, while others assert “Systems of power don’t go away. They just evolve,” and the unsettling reality that: “You never truly know who is watching you.”
Cypher premieres on Hulu on November 24. Stream the trailer in the gallery above.
Elsewhere in music news, Nicki Minaj has pushed Pink Friday 2’s release date back to December.
