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 title 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.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, after her break,’ and I’m like, ‘You imply doing festivals each different weekend? And making an album throughout 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 the moment downing antibiotics to mood — she’d be enjoying later that evening in help of her Chunk Me Tour.
“It’s no matter, I’ve carried out by way of 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 broadly praised Broadway run as “Imply Women” 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 “Imply Women” and launched and toured an EP and two albums’ value of music.
Rapp’s debut album, “Snow Angel,” arrived to a lot fanfare in 2023, and her sophomore file, “Chunk Me,” dropped in August. The following month, she kicked off her Chunk Me Tour, which lands on the Kia Discussion board on Friday.
“I can hear again to each track and be like, ‘Oh, that’s good,’” Reneé Rapp mentioned of her new album “Chunk Me.”
(Ashley Thompson / Respective Collective)
In different phrases, Rapp has been busy.
And as for her alleged hiatus, the singer mentioned, “The one actual break that I took was saying, ‘No, I don’t need to simply put out music to place 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 “Chunk Me,” Rapp mentioned she selected purposefully: “I needed to put in writing, like, mathematically, a very good pop album.”
“[‘Snow Angel’] was like, ‘OK, right here’s a T-shirt and a protracted sleeve and denims and sweatpants. They usually’re not folded, however right here you go. They’re all good items of clothes,’” the artist mentioned.
“This album is like all of these garments, however laundered and folded neat and completely wrapped in a bow,” she mentioned.
Ranging sonically from glam punk to synth pop and post-disco melodies, “Chunk Me” is a vocally wealthy and charmingly diaristic file 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 “Go away Me Alone,” she’ll “signal 100 NDAs, however I nonetheless say somethin.’”
“Chunk Me” topped Billboard’s Prime 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 “Chunk Me” as “a time capsule of the final two to a few years of my life. Each half. The great unhealthy 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 manner at one level, it may be true, even when it’s not true now,” Rapp mentioned.
On her aching ballad “Why Is She Nonetheless Right here?” Rapp performs the a part of a lover embittered by the lingering presence of a 3rd celebration in her relationship. The monitor may rating a movie noir sequence, its narrative betraying months of romantic turmoil.
In reality, the track attracts from “a three- or four-day interval of my life that I blew up into this huge factor,” Rapp mentioned.
Reneé Rapp will play her largest 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 title Alexander 23), has at all times recognized her to be a deeply delicate and passionate particular person.
“Reneé simply doesn’t really feel issues evenly,” Glantz mentioned. “I’ve by no means heard of her speaking about one thing lamely or with any sort of subtlety. When she feels one thing, she feels at 100%.”
“As a producer and co-writer,” he continued, “it’s form of my job to place that into music as finest I can.”
Glantz, who can be credited on hits from Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae, acknowledged Rapp’s “star energy” from the second he met her. He additionally felt a powerful “artistic chemistry” between them, which has since developed into a detailed inventive partnership that at instances veers into sibling rivalry.
The 2 conflict continually within the studio, with their ugliest spats recognized to derail recording days. They even argue about track titles. Regardless of Rapp dubbing her lead single “Cannonball” in her thoughts, Glantz together with “Chunk Me” writer-producers Omer Fedi and Julian Bunetta insisted “Go away Me Alone” was the plain 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 by no means actually win, as a result of even should you get what you need, she makes you’re feeling so unhealthy about it that you simply want you didn’t even get it.”
“We’re so shut that it’s form of only a magnifying glass on every part,” 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 definitely we had some stuff we have been enthusiastic about, however nothing felt prefer it was a real Trojan warrior of the album but.”
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. Attempt as she may in her songwriting, the artist mentioned she will by no means clarify herself in a manner that may fulfill her listeners — or stop them from coming to false conclusions about her.
“Generally I’ve to simply be nice with folks not understanding me or realizing me,” she mentioned. In addition to, “if I give everybody entry to realizing each little a part of me, then I don’t have something left for myself.”
It’s a traditional story for artists, Glantz mentioned. At first, the eye is thrilling, then it turns into claustrophobic.
“You begin to be extra on the market and within the public eye,” the writer-producer mentioned, “and I feel the pure development is you simply get somewhat extra protecting.”
On Friday, Rapp will play her largest L.A. present but on the Kia Discussion board — a venue with practically thrice 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 Chook, now her girlfriend, was one among her openers. (Glantz was the opposite.)
“The one instances I’ve ever performed crowds this huge are at festivals,” Rapp mentioned, the place audiences are there to see way over only one performer, even when they’re the headliner.
“There’s something particularly very electrical about enjoying your personal venues,” she mentioned.
Like her album, Rapp’s Chunk Me Tour set checklist is extremely curated, with every track contributing to a way of depth and strength of mind that emanates from “Chunk Me.” Sustaining that vitality all through a set, particularly when it’s in an area, 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 dwell surroundings. “Good Woman,” 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 biggest achievement as an artist not from climactic moments on stage however from the extra intimate elements of being a musician, like being within the studio, parsing her emotions alongside associates and distilling the mess into magic. Generally, she thinks she ought to take notes from her personal favourite artists like Frank Ocean, who’re content material to remain reclusive and maintain their work to themselves.
“However then different inspirations of mine put out loads of music and have this huge pop empire,” Rapp mentioned. “I discover myself getting actually confused with, like, what do I truly need?”
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 simply need to make music at this level,” Rapp mentioned, conclusively. Not a beat later, she modified her thoughts, as she’s wont to do.
“Really, I take that again,” she mentioned. “I need to do what the f— I need to do.”
