Within the music trade, the time period “hiatus” has traditionally been used to explain artists who take prolonged breaks between releases. Most frequently, they achieve this within the identify of artistic restoration — and to their followers’ chagrin.
Such dry spells have marked singer-songwriters like Fiona Apple and Lorde, who all through their careers have sustained a number of years-long intervals of radio silence between albums.
Therefore why Reneé Rapp was perplexed when, after going lower than two years with out releasing new solo music, folks began saying she was on hiatus.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, after her break,’ and I’m like, ‘You mean doing festivals every other weekend? And making an album during it?’” Rapp mentioned on a Zoom name in early October.
An hour or so later, the artist would head to sound verify at Nationwide Enviornment in Columbus, Ohio, the place — regardless of a fever she was at present downing antibiotics to mood — she’d be enjoying later that evening in help of her Chunk Me Tour.
“It’s whatever, I’ve performed through worse,” Rapp mentioned, recalling a Christmas Eve present she’d pushed by way of regardless of a bout of meals poisoning.
Within the years since her extensively praised Broadway run as “Mean Girls” villain Regina George, which she launched into when she was simply 19, Rapp has had a stint in tv, reprised her position as North Shore Excessive Faculty’s apex predator for a film musical adaptation of “Mean Girls” and launched and toured an EP and two albums’ price of music.
Rapp’s debut album, “Snow Angel,” arrived to a lot fanfare in 2023, and her sophomore document, “Bite Me,” dropped in August. The subsequent month, she kicked off her Chunk Me Tour, which lands on the Kia Discussion board on Friday.
“I can listen back to every song and be like, ‘Oh, that’s good,’” Reneé Rapp mentioned of her new album “Bite Me.”
(Ashley Thompson / Respective Collective)
In different phrases, Rapp has been busy.
And as for her alleged hiatus, the singer mentioned, “The only real break that I took was saying, ‘No, I don’t want to just put out music to put out music.’”
It’s not that she didn’t have any songs written; she simply didn’t imagine in any of them strongly sufficient to launch them. Some, she’s nonetheless sitting on.
However the 12 tracks that make up “Bite Me,” Rapp mentioned she selected purposefully: “I wanted to write, like, mathematically, a good pop album.”
“[‘Snow Angel’] was like, ‘OK, here’s a T-shirt and a long sleeve and jeans and sweatpants. And they’re not folded, but here you go. They’re all good pieces of clothing,’” the artist mentioned.
“This album is like all of those clothes, but laundered and folded neat and perfectly wrapped in a bow,” she mentioned.
Ranging sonically from glam punk to synth pop and post-disco melodies, “Bite Me” is a vocally wealthy and charmingly diaristic document that hits like a wine-drunk dream. Like Rapp herself, it swings between emotional extremes, at all times preserving the singer’s trademark candor. As she quips on her splashy lead single “Leave Me Alone,” she’ll “sign a hundred NDAs, but I still say somethin.’”
“Bite Me” topped Billboard’s High Album Gross sales chart, transferring 47,000 copies — 30,000 of which have been vinyl purchases — within the U.S. in its first week. It additionally positioned third on the general Billboard 200, giving Rapp her first prime 10 entry.
Upon its August launch, Rapp described “Bite Me” as “a time capsule of the last two to three years of my life. Every part. The good bad and the ugly.”
However whereas the album is autobiographical in spirit, its songs additionally profit from a leniency on Rapp’s half about her faithfulness to their supply materials. Some songs mix one of many singer’s life experiences with one other, whereas others are intentionally disproportionate to such occasions.
“My line is, like, if I felt that way at one point, it can be true, even if it’s not true now,” Rapp mentioned.
On her aching ballad “Why Is She Still Here?” Rapp performs the a part of a lover embittered by the lingering presence of a 3rd get together in her relationship. The monitor might rating a movie noir sequence, its narrative betraying months of romantic turmoil.
Genuinely, the tune attracts from “a three- or four-day period of my life that I blew up into this big thing,” Rapp mentioned.
Reneé Rapp will play her greatest L.A. present but on the Kia Discussion board.
(Respective Collective / Ashley Thompson)
Rapp’s shut buddy and frequent collaborator, singer-songwriter and producer Alexander Glantz (who goes by the stage identify Alexander 23), has at all times identified her to be a deeply delicate and passionate individual.
“Reneé just doesn’t feel things lightly,” Glantz mentioned. “I’ve never heard of her talking about something lamely or with any type of subtlety. When she feels something, she feels at 100%.”
“As a producer and co-writer,” he continued, “it’s kind of my job to put that into music as best I can.”
Glantz, who can be credited on hits from Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae, acknowledged Rapp’s “star power” from the second he met her. He additionally felt a powerful “creative chemistry” between them, which has since developed into an in depth creative partnership that at instances veers into sibling rivalry.
The 2 conflict continuously within the studio, with their ugliest spats identified to derail recording days. They even argue about tune titles. Regardless of Rapp dubbing her lead single “Cannonball” in her thoughts, Glantz together with “Bite Me” writer-producers Omer Fedi and Julian Bunetta insisted “Leave Me Alone” was the apparent selection.
In the long run, Rapp was outnumbered. However she additionally has a knack for not letting anybody’s victories go to their head, Glantz mentioned: “I never really win, because even if you get what you want, she makes you feel so bad about it that you wish you didn’t even get it.”
“We’re so close that it’s kind of just a magnifying glass on everything,” Glantz mentioned. When issues aren’t clicking, it’s torture, he mentioned, however “when it’s good, it’s f— euphoric.”
The day they wrote “Mad” fell within the latter camp.
“We’d been circling the sound for months,” Glantz mentioned, “and certainly we had some stuff we were excited about, but nothing felt like it was a true Trojan warrior of the album yet.”
However that day in Malibu, one thing clicked. Rapp’s imaginative and prescient was utterly opened to them.
For Rapp, a public determine whose followers can’t assist however kind parasocial attachments to her, it’s a reduction to really feel so deeply understood. Strive as she would possibly in her songwriting, the artist mentioned she will by no means clarify herself in a means that can fulfill her listeners — or stop them from coming to false conclusions about her.
“Sometimes I have to just be fine with people not understanding me or knowing me,” she mentioned. Apart from, “if I give everyone access to knowing every little part of me, then I don’t have anything left for myself.”
It’s a traditional story for artists, Glantz mentioned. At first, the eye is thrilling, then it turns into claustrophobic.
“You start to be more out there and in the public eye,” the writer-producer mentioned, “and I think the natural progression is you just get a little more protective.”
On Friday, Rapp will play her greatest L.A. present but on the Kia Discussion board — a venue with almost 3 times the capability of the Greek Theatre, the place she carried out in 2023 in help of her Snow Exhausting Emotions Tour. Throughout that run, singer-songwriter Towa Hen, now her girlfriend, was one in all her openers. (Glantz was the opposite.)
“The only times I’ve ever played crowds this big are at festivals,” Rapp mentioned, the place audiences are there to see excess of only one performer, even when they’re the headliner.
“There is something specifically very electric about playing your own venues,” she mentioned.
Like her album, Rapp’s Chunk Me Tour set listing is extremely curated, with every tune contributing to a way of depth and self-discipline that emanates from “Bite Me.” Sustaining that vitality all through a set, particularly when it’s in an enviornment, is demanding, Rapp mentioned. It makes her miss the small acoustic exhibits that marked her early touring days.
However she’s rewarded with a deeper love for her songs that blossom in a reside atmosphere. “Good Girl,” particularly, has grown on her.
Reneé Rapp brings her Chunk Me Tour to the Kia Discussion board on Friday, Oct. 17.
(Respective Collective / Ashley Thompson)
Nonetheless, Rapp will get her best achievement as an artist not from climactic moments on stage however from the extra intimate facets of being a musician, like being within the studio, parsing her emotions alongside pals and distilling the mess into magic. Typically, she thinks she ought to take notes from her personal favourite artists like Frank Ocean, who’re content material to remain reclusive and hold their work to themselves.
“But then other inspirations of mine put out a lot of music and have this big pop empire,” Rapp mentioned. “I find myself getting really confused with, like, what do I actually want?”
Does she need to return to Broadway? Does she need to take one other stab at Hollywood? Does she need to fall off the face of the earth for some time?
“I just want to make music at this point,” Rapp mentioned, conclusively. Not a beat later, she modified her thoughts, as she’s wont to do.
“Actually, I take that back,” she mentioned. “I want to do what the f— I want to do.”
