Reneé Rapp just tipped her hat to Beyoncé when it comes to her musical talent, especially singing.
As of late, the star debuted her pop album Snow Angel, which has gone on to be the biggest earning U.S. sales debut in 2023. The singer also starred in the latest rendition of Mean Girls as Regina George. Yet, in a new interview with the Hollywood Report, the “Tummy Hurts” songstress gushes over receiving flowers from the “Halo” singer and even discussed bonding with rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
On Feb. 13, just two days after Beyoncé surprise-dropped her new country songs “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” during the 2024 Super Bowl — Rapp performed a cover of Queen Bey’s first proper foray into country music: “Daddy Lessons” from 2016’s Grammy-winning Lemonade.
Shortly after, Rapp took to socials to share a photo of herself with a hand over her mouth as she received flowers from her idol.
“I’ve never been speechless in my life. It’s literally going to make me cry,” Rapp told The Hollywood Reporter. “She is everything — and the reason that I know how to sing. I would sit down and listen to her different tonalities and phonics and phrasing styles and be like, ‘Please, Jesus, let me be able to do this.’”
Beyoncé has been a fixture in Rapp’s life long before she took the world by storm with Mean Girls, The Sex Lives of College Girls and her Snow Angel LP. Back when she was trying to break into the industry, Rapp used to upload covers of Beyoncé songs on YouTube. Queen Bey also provided a bit more than just musical inspiration for a young Rapp. “I had body dysmorphia and feeling like I had too much of an a–. If I felt badly about my body, my mother would make me sing ‘Bootylicious,’ and it was everything to me,” Rapp recalled.
Rapp may have received her flowers for her cover’s of Queen B’s country hits as she noted, “Let’s be clear, Beyoncé doing country is the best thing that’s ever happened to country music.”
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The singer went on to say though that she has taken a lot of inspiration from the singer’s eras across the board, specifically the R&B ones.
The “Poison Poison” singer notes Beyoncé, SZA, Frank Ocean and Jazmine Sullivan as formative musical influences who “have made the biggest impact in [her] life.”
“I wanted so badly to do something that was slightly R&B-leaning, but in a way that wasn’t making something my own that is not at all my own, and something that feels authentic,” she explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “I would love to do a project like that, but it needs to be done well … because I think if a white girl does anything that slightly emulates R&B, it’s praised 10 times more than when Black people do it … just because of the way the f—king world works, and it’s s–ty in that regard. But yeah, it is something that I want to do so badly, and I will do.”
