Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
NEWS
Sam Smith recently opened up about the “nightmare” experience of getting liposuction as a teenager.
In a new appearance on the Podcrushed podcast, the Stay with Me singer – who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns – spoke with co-host Penn Badgley about deciding to have cosmetic surgery to remove excess fat at just 13 years old.
“I had an operation on my chest when I was 13, because it was starting to grow,” they explained. “There were different reasons behind it, but mostly, I was being teased so much. I couldn’t go swimming at school, and changing in the locker room was awful. So, I ended up having liposuction at 13.”
Getting emotional, Sam shared that they had long struggled with food and body image, though their parents were “incredibly supportive” of the choice to go through with the procedure.
Although the operation “worked,” the Too Good at Goodbyes star admitted that they wore the post-surgery bandage much longer than they were supposed to.
“It was all part of the struggle with eating and my body,” the 33-year-old said. “The liposuction helped, but it was also a nightmare because they gave me a bandage. If I wore it, I could skip to the front of the lunch line. So, I kept it on for nearly a year, saying, ‘Oh, don’t get too close,’ just so I could eat first… so really, the surgery didn’t fix much because I’ve always loved food.”
Lately, Sam has been performing a residency at the Warsaw venue in Brooklyn, New York.
The next To Be Free concert is set for November 19.
