Tierra Whack is one of the current era’s more exciting and talented new Rap recording artists. A woman artist in a very unwelcoming field to women, most of the time, she’s currently blazing a path of pushing the creative boundaries of what we see in rap. Her experimental ways, along with amazing videos, set her apart. Here, this is where the film Cypher starts, like any documentary about a recording artist—with their humble beginnings rhyming in rap cyphers in Philadelphia in her early days to her first mixtapes to being signed and releasing her first album. The film then shifts from a documentary to a found footage conspiracy film. It shifts to being about this woman who we think is a fan of Whack who disappears, which leads to this theory of an Illuminati-like secret society that controls the world through famous people. If this sounds like the whole “x” rapper is in the Illuminati, then yes, it is precisely that. And it’s a fun way for the people around Whack to deal with the weird happenings around her, with the documentarians set up as the protagonists to figure out what’s happening.
The film is fun enough and changes subtly, making it more interesting as you notice it’s not long about this regular music doc you’d usually see on a streamer. The film uses chapters that use the design cues on the chapter titles, reminding you of The Exorcist or The Amityville Horror. The film feels very much like Whack’s music as it plays with the assumed ideas and tropes of rap music. The story turning into the Illuminati narrative works well with a person who might not really enjoy the scrutiny of fame. Yet that fame is part of the cost of being a successful rapper, but people also always question it. Between being industry plants and conspiracies on how a person gets on in the rap game, it leads perfectly to this plot. In the film, Whack is the center of the action but not much of the character; you don’t really know if she’s bought into it all or working against it. It’s something I enjoyed while watching.
Another thing I enjoyed is that it isn’t very long. All the people in the film, the actors and the ones playing themselves, all did an excellent job of making it feel natural and that it was, in fact, a documentary. Cypher was a wonderful way for Tierra Whack to expand her ideas of her work into another medium while also introducing herself to those who might not know her music well.
Score: B
RIOTUS 