Reneé Rapp Explores Love With Pop Anthems on Her Bold New Album, ‘Bite Me’: ‘Everything I Make Is Gay’

“I was crying so much in therapy,” Reneé Rapp says with an incongruous laugh as she logs onto Zoom. Her therapy session was earlier that morning, but she still arrives upbeat, friendly and gregarious.

That unfiltered, unapologetic directness is a quality that’s earned her a fiercely loyal following, and it’s on full display on her sophomore album “Bite Me” (out today), a record that dives deep into emotional vulnerability and queer love, specifically love between women. Like everything else, it’s something Rapp doesn’t dilute or disguise.

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“Everything inherently that I do is lesbianism,” she says. “Everything I make is gay.” The stories behind the album draw from the last six years of her life, a period of clarity and self-discovery. “Even the parts that were informed by relationships when I was with men — they’re still lesbian songs to me,” she says. “Because when I was with men, it wasn’t like I just wasn’t gay at that point. I was conforming.” 

While the last half-decade informed the album’s creation, it’s the past two — during which Rapp has been in a relationship with fellow musician Towa Bird — that feel especially pivotal. The couple went public at the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty in March 2024 and have been together ever since; it’s a relationship that’s clearly left an imprint on her songs.

“I thought you had to be in a miserable relationship to make a good album,” she says. “I’ve been in a really miserable relationship and made an okay album, and now I’m in an amazing relationship, and I believe that I made something that I think is great.”

When asked if Rapp plans to collaborate with her partner soon, she laughs: “I keep trying to do shit with her, and she’s like, ‘No, bro.”

With songs like “Why Is She Still Here?” and “Kiss It Kiss It,” “Bite Me” is packed with WLW anthems. Rapp highlights the former as the “gayest song” on the album, a standout ballad that delves into the emotional aftermath of non-monogamous relationships. “You can’t throw a rock and not hit an open queer, lesbian relationship in Brooklyn,” she jokes. “So many of my friends get involved in relationships that are either open or poly and then end up being like, ‘Oh my God, wait, I can’t do this.’”

She is also keenly aware of the gaps in LGBTQ+ representation in pop. “I think the only people that are really pushed by mainstream music are just white lesbians,” she says. “And even then, it’s pretty scarce.”

Rapp discovered her love of performing as a child in Charlotte, NC. Her first major splash was on Broadway in 2019 when she starred as Regina George in the “Mean Girls” musical, a role she reprised for last year’s musical film adaptation. Amid her rise on the theater circuit, she pivoted to music: Her 2023 debut album “Snow Angel” was a confessional, versatile record that quickly cemented her as an anti-hero to today’s pop titans.

She admits that she’s a relative newcomer to the kind of music she’s making. “I am not a pop girl,” she says. “I didn’t grow up listening to pop music. I grew up on rap, soul, R&B. The only pop I liked was Kesha — and even that was, like, alt-pop.”

And yet, here she is now — fully rooted in a genre she once kept at arm’s length. “This time around, I knew what I wanted. I wasn’t making [this album] to impress anyone else. I made it to impress myself.”.

There’s a comedic edge to the way Rapp delivers a line, even when she strays into territory that could get most stars side-eyed — or worse, like in her now-infamous interview with Ziwe where she casually joked about prison stabbings. “If you guys think I’m fucking insane in interviews, you would hate to spend a day with me,” she says with a laugh.

“I never thought I was funny,” she continues. “And then I started getting cast in comedies and I was like, ‘This is interesting.’” One of those roles was in the hit HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” where Rapp became a fan favorite before exiting the show during its third season. She even references the departure on one of the album’s singles titled “Leave Me Alone” where she sings, “I took my sex life with me, now the show ain’t fucking.”

That lyric, Rapp clarifies, has “so many layers to it”: “How do I cope with something and put it in a song and make it cheeky? Taking a stab at something bad that’s happened to me.” She confirms that she left the show of her own accord, but declines to get specific. “I don’t know what they do.” 

Though her fan base doesn’t have an official name, their devotion has reached an almost feral level. And if that means those fans are now barking — literally — at her while she’s on stage, she’s totally fine with it. “It’s so animalistic,” she explains, referring to the barking trend. This much was clear at a live performance at the Nice Guy in Los Angeles just weeks before her album release — an eruption of playful but thunderous howls that felt more like a rowdy sports arena than an intimate performance. 

“The reason I think it’s kind of fun is I grew up going to football and basketball games,” says the Charlotte, NC native, “and that’s such an American sports thing to do. So, I find it really funny when we do it at lesbian concerts,” she adds. “I think it’s just sexy.”