Watch Reneé Rapp discuss herself in interviews, and two issues rapidly develop into clear: that she fucks, and that she provides none. By her stints in youth theater (say hi there to your 2018 Jimmy Awards winner), Broadway, Hollywood, and aspirant pop stardom, the 25-year-old singer from Huntersville, North Carolina has maintained a sharp-edged aversion to media coaching of any kind; “folks have tried,” she not too long ago advised Vainness Truthful. Throughout a memorable press junket look selling the 2024 Imply Ladies film musical, Rapp took the “asshole” proprietor of a tour bus firm to process whereas her co-star buried his head in his arms: “If you happen to’re watching this, I can’t stand you and I hope your small business burns.”
The stunts round Rapp’s 2023 studio debut, Snow Angel—like an commercial for an influence ballad known as “I Hate Boston” on a billboard in Boston’s North Finish—continuously outmatched the persona of the songs themselves. Her new album, BITE ME, needs to vary that. “My ex walked in and my different ex together with her,” Rapp deadpans on “Go away Me Alone,” the buzzy, bratty lead single. “The three of us collectively, that’s an actual tongue tornado!”
Stunning no queer particular person, queer love and relationship are fertile floor for the type of sticky conditions that thrive in pop songwriting. To the coffeeshop strums of “I Can’t Have You Round Me Anymore,” Rapp particulars a sequence of compromising encounters with a not-quite-friend, not-quite-lover: “In some way we at all times find yourself bare/Nothing ever occurs, but it surely nonetheless feels actual good.” Caught between blasé indifference and emotional undressing, she’s the sort who can knot a cherry stem together with her tongue however typically leads to a tangle.
Rapp is a vocal powerhouse, however BITE ME tends to waste her skills on its most maudlin ballads. Her outstanding belting within the prolonged ultimate refrain of “That’s So Humorous” is ready towards a piano chorus that sounds prefer it was plinked out by a center schooler on the household child grand. “Why Is She Nonetheless Right here?” is a Winehouse-lite torch track of the kind that landed RAYE on the awards present circuit, and proof that uncooked expertise will not be at all times an alternative choice to style. Higher are the tracks the place Rapp can flex her performing chops: On “Mad,” she will barely maintain again a smirk, and her breathy confession that “I believe we nearly made a child/I imply we will’t, however we got here so shut” drags “Kiss It Kiss It” simply past the blander aspect of disco-country. Solely the generic ’80s synth-pop of “Good Lady” wholly resists Rapp’s charms; since when would she promise to have one drink then name it an evening?
