Watch Reneé Rapp speak about herself in interviews, and two issues shortly turn out to be clear: that she fucks, and that she offers none. By her stints in youth theater (say good day 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; “individuals have tried,” she not too long ago instructed Self-importance 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 activity whereas her co-star buried his head in his fingers: “In case you’re watching this, I can’t stand you and I hope what you are promoting burns.”
The stunts round Rapp’s 2023 studio debut, Snow Angel—like an commercial for an influence ballad referred to as “I Hate Boston” on a billboard in Boston’s North Finish—regularly outmatched the character of the songs themselves. Her new album, BITE ME, needs to vary that. “My ex walked in and my different ex along 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 individual, queer love and courting are fertile floor for the form 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: “Someway 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 along with her tongue however usually leads to a tangle.
Rapp is a vocal powerhouse, however BITE ME tends to waste her abilities on its most maudlin ballads. Her exceptional belting within the prolonged closing refrain of “That’s So Humorous” is about 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 tune of the type that landed RAYE on the awards present circuit, and proof that uncooked expertise is just not at all times an alternative to style. Higher are the tracks the place Rapp can flex her performing chops: On “Mad,” she will be able to barely maintain again a smirk, and her breathy confession that “I believe we nearly made a child/I imply we are able to’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?
