In a world with various theories about the music industry, Hulu and Andscape examine the concept of secret society through the personal scope of Grammy-nominated rapper Tierra Whack.
On Thursday, Hulu held the premiere screening for Cypher at the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn.
Directed by Chris Moukarbel, the mastermind behind Gaga: Five Foot Two and HBO’s Wig, Cypher follows the meteoric rise of Whack from her first viral internet moment when she was 15, freestyling on the streets of Philly to her stardom of today.
As the story unfolds, things get weird, inexplicable and mildly disturbing, yielding a suspenseful experience for the audience.
Earlier this year, Cypher won the 2023 Tribeca Festival’s Founders Award for best U.S. narrative feature, propelling the psychological thriller into rarefied air.
“You know, because it looks like a documentary, but it’s a more complex take on a documentary, for it to win in the “narrative” category meant a lot because it means they saw it as more than a doc in a way,” Moukarbel said during a red carpet interview with Blavity. “It was an experiment, and it felt like the experiment actually worked.”
After years of dedicating a considerable portion of her life to music, the emergence of Cypher could be a full-circle moment for Whack and her team.
“When I was younger, I wasn’t sure that people would care about a young Black girl from Philadelphia,” Whack told Blavity. “I didn’t know how important that would be one day. I was just living out my dream and living in my truth. For people to gravitate to it, it means everything to me.”
In conjunction with the film, Whack recently dropped a new single entitled “Chanel Pit” and intends on dropping her next studio album in 2024.
On Nov. 24, the film will be released for general release and available on Hulu and at select theaters.
