Tierra Whack Returns With First Solo Track of 2020 ‘Dora’

Philly rapper Tierra Whack has released a new song, “Dora,” alongside a charmingly weird animated video.

“Dora” boasts a decisively playful quality, with a beat centered around burbling synths and a simple yet serene vocal loop. Whack both matches this tenor and toys with it as she bends and twists her voice, peeling off bars like, “Shining like a diamond, fine dining/Forty thousand, turn that shit to fifty thousand/Bitch I’m wilding, stranded on an island/Money piling, Rolex cause I put that time in.”

Conceptual artist Alex Da Corte directed the video for “Dora,” which channels kids television and classic stop-motion animation to create the perfect accompaniment for the song. In a statement, Da Corte said, “Tierra and myself still feel it is urgent to find a way to speak to our feelings through music and pictures. Thinking of the ways in which Aretha Franklin, Fred Rogers, and Jim Henson navigated the world through good times and bad times with determined positivity was deeply inspiring to me during the making of this video. To make Tierra laugh was in some ways the best I could do on the hardest of days.”

“Dora” marks Whack’s first proper solo single of the year, although back in March she did release “Stuck” — a quarantine anthem set to Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” — on Twitter. Whack has done a few collaborations this year, though, teaming with Alicia Keys on “Me x 7,” Melanie Martinez on “Copy Cat,” and Lil Yachty, A$AP Rocky, and Tyler, the Creator on “T.D.” Whack’s debut album, Whack World, was released in 2018, while last year she shared a string of one-off singles.