\n<\/p>\n
\n\tRene\u00e9 Rapp has drastically switched up her game since her excellent 2023 debut Snow Angel <\/em>\u2014 and it\u2019s a glorious noise to hear. She spends her second album Bite Me<\/em> enjoying what a rowdy-and-proud mess she is, for one of the year\u2019s most delightful pop blowouts, an uproarious 33-minute celebration of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It\u2019s her first album since coming out, and damn, she\u2019s making up for lost time, with bangers full of Hollywood parties and thirsty groupies and hangovers and the mad dash to the next club. It\u2019s a concept album where the concept is \u201cIf I can\u2019t be happy, then at least I\u2019m hot.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe asked me how I like my breakfast\/I told her \u2018hot on the bedroom floor\u2019\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s a pretty typical conversation on this album, from the hell-raising rocker \u201cKiss It Kiss It.\u201d But as she shrugs later in the same song, \u201cTalking is boring,\u201d and that\u2019s the last thing she wants to be on Bite Me<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tRapp broke out as an actress, in the Broadway show Mean Girls<\/em> and HBO Max\u2019s The Sex Lives of College Girls<\/em>, but now she dismisses her actorly past with the kiss-off, \u201cI took my sex life with me, now that show ain\u2019t fuckin.\u2019\u201d She was so demure and forlorn by comparison on Snow Angel<\/em>, which had wonderfully heartbroken confessions like \u201cI Hate Boston,\u201d one of the very best Boston-hating songs ever written. But that was a short ingenue era, because Bite Me<\/em> is a lot less melancholy than Snow Angel<\/em>, to say the least. These days, she\u2019s living the hedonistic high life in L.A., just young, rich, and tasteless.<\/p>\n \n\tBite Me<\/em> gets production mainly from Omer Jedi, along with other heavy hitters like Alexander 23 (who executive-produced her debut), Ryan Tedder, Julian Bunetta, Carter Lang, and more. The rock moves are straight-up Nineties grunge \u2014 like so many of today\u2019s brightest pop queens, Rene\u00e9 aspires to make her own L7, Hole, and Garbage bangers. Party-hearty anthems like \u201cLeave Me Alone\u201d hit like old-school Sunset Strip rock sleaze updated for the sapphic pop explosion of our moment \u2014 as if David Lee Roth or Bret Michaels got reborn as Gen Z lesbian icons.<\/p>\n