Renée Rapp (born Renée Jane Rapp, January 10, 2000, in Huntersville, North Carolina) is an American singer, songwriter and actress who followed a self-described "meticulous plan": regional musical theater, a national Jimmy Award, Broadway's Mean Girls, an HBO Max sitcom, and finally a major-label pop career that produced her first Billboard top-10 and first UK No. 1 album, Bite Me, in 2025.
Renée Rapp was born to Charles "Charlie" Rapp, who worked in medical sales, and Denise Olexa, an accountant who later became her daughter's business manager. Denise chose an alliterative first and last name, two words both starting with "R," "just in case" her daughter pursued a music career, a detail Rapp confirmed on Amy Poehler's podcast Good Hang. Rapp began singing as a small child, reportedly performing at her grandmother's funeral at age seven, and has cited Beyoncé and P!nk as her foundational vocal influences.
She attended Hopewell High School in Huntersville for two years, where she acted in the school's theater program and played on the boys' varsity golf team, since no girls' team existed at her middle school. She has said the golf career was really her parents' idea, hoping for a college scholarship: "I only played golf 'cause my parents wanted me to get a golf scholarship... That did not work out for them, but I had fun." She later transferred to the audition-only Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, the same school that produced Eva Noblezada, a Blumey Award and Jimmy Award winner who went on to star in the West End revival of Miss Saigon. Rapp has said Noblezada's path was the explicit template for her own.
In 2018, Rapp won Best Actress at the Blumey Awards, Charlotte's regional feeder for the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, for playing Sandra in her school's production of Big Fish. She then won the 2018 Jimmy Award for Best Performance by an Actress for the same role, beating roughly forty competitors nationwide and earning a $10,000 scholarship. Presenter Laura Benanti told her afterward, "I will never be as confident as that 18-year-old." That same year she was cast as Wendla in Theatre Charlotte's regional production of Spring Awakening.
The Jimmy Award win directly launched Rapp's Broadway career. In May 2019, at age 19, she was cast as Regina George in the Broadway production of Mean Girls, taking over the role from original star and Tony nominee Taylor Louderman, following a limited summer engagement before stepping into the part full-time on September 10, 2019. During the run, Rapp has said she told producers, "I will only accept this role if you promise to support my music career in the future. I aspire to be a pop star; I don't want to do this forever," and that the production's team backed the ambition. She performed the role until Broadway's COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.
Rapp has been candid that the Broadway years took a toll. In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, she said colleagues around the production "said some incredibly hurtful things about my body," contributing to an eating disorder serious enough that her parents flew to New York before the pandemic to try to persuade her to leave the show. She has also disclosed diagnoses of ADHD and a mood disorder, saying they helped her stop believing she was simply "being stupid."
After Broadway shut down, Rapp moved to Los Angeles to film The Sex Lives of College Girls, Mindy Kaling's HBO Max comedy, in which she played Leighton Murray, a wealthy, preppy, closeted lesbian college student, from the show's 2021 premiere through 2024. The role gave her mainstream visibility beyond theater circles, with praise from W, Harper's Bazaar and The Hollywood Reporter. In July 2023, Variety confirmed Rapp would not return as a main cast member for Season 3, formalizing her pivot to music as her primary focus, though she has continued to voice interest in returning to screen and stage work. In December 2022 it was announced she would reprise Regina George in a Mean Girls movie-musical, produced by Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey and co-directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., released by Paramount on January 12, 2024.
Rapp has said the real turning point came at the end of 2021, home in Huntersville for the holidays after a major breakup, the emotional catalyst for what became her debut EP. She released the single "Tattoos" independently after teasing it on TikTok, and the social traction it generated is what got her signed. Her label pursuit had reportedly begun at age 16 and faced earlier rejection. Rapp signed with Interscope Records in June 2022, a deal that closed just two days before she had to begin filming Season 2 of College Girls, meaning she wrote and recorded her debut EP around 14-hour shooting days. She also signed with WME for talent representation, announced that November.
Everything to Everyone, her debut EP, was released November 11, 2022, on Interscope. It received acclaim from Rolling Stone, Billboard and Vogue, the latter noting it made the writer "(a) dance, (b) cry, and (c) feel things, in that order, which is really all you can ask of pop music." Standout tracks included "Too Well," which charted on the Top 40, "In the Kitchen" and "Don't Tell My Mom." Her debut headline tour supporting the EP sold out in minutes, and by late 2022 her catalog had surpassed 200 million cumulative streams.
Rapp's debut studio album, Snow Angel, arrived August 18, 2023, on Interscope, executive-produced by her close collaborator Alexander 23 (Alexander Glantz) and featuring writing contributions from Justin Tranter, Skyler Stonestreet, Amy Allen and others. Time magazine noted Rapp has a writing credit on every track. The 12-song album, including "Talk Too Much," "I Hate Boston," "Poison Poison," "Gemini Moon," the title track, "The Wedding Song," "Pretty Girls," "Tummy Hurts," "I Wish," "Willow" and "23," drew comparisons to Panic! at the Disco and Carly Rae Jepsen and earned a Metacritic score of 75/100. A deluxe edition followed on November 17, 2023, adding "Messy," "I Do," "Swim" and a remix of "Tummy Hurts" featuring Coco Jones, with an accompanying video directed by Cole Santiago. Rapp called the pairing fated: "it feels like you were destined to be part of this track."
Snow Angel debuted at No. 44 on the US Billboard 200 with 18,000 album-equivalent units, at the time the biggest first-week showing for a debut album by a female artist in 2023. It reached No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart, her first UK entry, and No. 42 on Australia's ARIA Albums Chart. After the Mean Girls film's release and a January 2024 Saturday Night Live appearance, the album re-entered the Billboard 200 at No. 114 with an additional 10,000 units.
Rapp's sophomore album, Bite Me, was released August 1, 2025, on Interscope, led by singles "Leave Me Alone" (May 21, 2025), "Mad," "Why Is She Still Here?" and "I Think I Like You Better When You're Gone." The 12-track, roughly 33-minute record, rounded out by "Sometimes," "Kiss It Kiss It," "Good Girl," "I Can't Have You Around Me Anymore," "Shy," "At Least I'm Hot," "That's So Funny" and "You'd Like That Wouldn't You," broadened her production circle considerably beyond the Alexander 23-centric Snow Angel sessions, adding Omer Fedi, Julian Bunetta, Carter Lang, Ryan Tedder, Emile Haynie, Henry Kwapis, Solomonophonic and Vaughn Oliver. Rapp described her approach bluntly: "I wanted to write, like, mathematically, a good pop album." Lead single "Leave Me Alone" directly addresses media scrutiny and her exit from The Sex Lives of College Girls.
The album marked a significant commercial jump, debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 equivalent album units, her first US top-10 album. Of those units, 47,000 were album sales, a career-best week including 30,000 vinyl copies, debuting at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart, with the remainder from 21.85 million on-demand streams. Internationally, Bite Me debuted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart with 15,643 units, her first UK No. 1, surpassing Snow Angel's No. 7 peak, and reached the top 10 in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.
Critics consistently frame Rapp's music at the intersection of Broadway-trained vocal power and confessional pop songwriting. The Telegraph's Poppie Platt wrote that Rapp is on track to become "a fabulous 21st century popstar" if she keeps lacing her music with "natural wit," while cautioning she risks becoming just another "successful young actor turned pop star" without "that special something." Line of Best Fit's Sam Franzini praised her ability to convey "big feelings" in "exuberant, hilarious" ways, and Dork's Alex Ingle called Snow Angel the "arrival of Renée Rapp."
Her catalog moves across several identifiable modes. Ballad-forward vulnerability defines tracks like "23," "I Wish," "The Wedding Song" and "Snow Angel," which lean on Broadway-caliber vocal builds and confessional lyrics about heartbreak, substance use and identity. Sardonic, upbeat pop-rock defines "Talk Too Much," "Pretty Girls" and Bite Me's "Mad" and "Leave Me Alone," which Official Charts described as bringing "gritty pop-rock riffs and razor-sharp wit." R&B-inflected songwriting shows up on "Tummy Hurts," reinforced by the Coco Jones remix. And Rapp has been explicit about the queerness running through her work: discussing Bite Me, she said, "Everything I make is gay," calling "Why Is She Still Here?" the "gayest song" on the album, an anthem for "women who love women" processing the fallout of non-monogamous relationships. Earlier single "Pretty Girls" was described by reviewers as capturing "the soaring highs and excruciating lows of a queer individual's experience," specifically being led on by a straight woman.
Her primary creative partner across both albums has been Alexander 23, who executive-produced Snow Angel and is credited on 11 of Bite Me's 12 tracks. GRAMMY.com notes their bond began with "a chance meeting in January 2023" that quickly evolved into a full creative partnership. Bite Me widened that circle to include Omer Fedi, known for pop-punk-adjacent, guitar-forward production, and Julian Bunetta, giving the sophomore album, per Rolling Stone, a more "gritty," rock-inflected edge relative to Snow Angel's balladry.
Rapp's debut headline run in support of Everything to Everyone sold out immediately upon on-sale in late 2022. Her second tour, the Snow Hard Feelings Tour, ran September 15, 2023, through March 4, 2024, comprising 36 to 38 shows across North America and Europe with support from Alexander 23 and guitarist Towa Bird. A UK/Ireland leg played Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, London and Dublin in February and March 2024. Highlights included a sold-out date at The Anthem in Washington, D.C., with 6,000 tickets and a $258,550 gross, and festival slots at Coachella, Governors Ball, Boston Calling, Bonnaroo, Hangout Music Fest and the March Madness Music Festival in 2024. Towa Bird joined Rapp onstage for a stripped-down Cranberries "Linger" cover during the UK leg, a moment that fueled public speculation about their relationship. Rapp's father, Charlie, has appeared onstage with her during tour performances, including a duet-style feature during "I Wish" at the tour's Manchester date.
The Bite Me Tour, Rapp's biggest headline run to date and her first arena tour, launched September 23, 2025, at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and runs through March 22, 2026, in Dublin, with 27 to 32 shows across North America and Europe. Major venues include Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, TD Garden and the Kia Forum, with support from Syd and Ravyn Lenae in North America and Absolutely, Raye's younger sister, across the European leg. Rapp also headlined Toronto's All Things Go festival on October 4, 2025, alongside Kacey Musgraves, Role Model and Charlotte Cardin. In late October 2025, illness forced Rapp to postpone her Atlanta and Tampa shows, citing doctor's orders for "vocal rest and physical recovery"; both were rescheduled to early November, and she completed her Charlotte hometown show as planned. The tour's 2026 calendar adds Rapp's first-ever Australian headline shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in late January, tied to the Australian Open's AO Live series, plus a run of European arena and festival dates including Belgium's Rock Werchter and Spain's Cruïlla Festival.
Rapp has also headlined the expanding All Things Go festival multiple times, including its 2024 debut in the D.C. area and its inaugural New York edition at Forest Hills Stadium alongside Chappell Roan, Janelle Monáe, MUNA and Ethel Cain, a booking that situates her within a broader wave of queer-fronted pop acts headlining explicitly LGBTQ-centered festival programming.
Beyond Alexander 23, Rapp's most visible collaboration is with Coco Jones, featured on the "Tummy Hurts" remix. Towa Bird, a British-Filipino guitarist and singer-songwriter, both opened for Rapp on the Snow Hard Feelings Tour and performed live with her band, including a November 2023 duet performance of "Tummy Hurts" on Late Night with Seth Meyers with Bird on lead guitar; that professional partnership evolved into a publicly confirmed romantic relationship. Megan Thee Stallion co-starred on "Not My Fault," a disco-pop single tied to the Mean Girls (2024) promotional cycle, released with an official video and performed together on Saturday Night Live on January 20, 2024. Olivia Rodrigo is co-featured with Rapp on the film soundtrack version of the same song. Bite Me's wider producer roster, Omer Fedi, Julian Bunetta, Carter Lang, Ryan Tedder, Emile Haynie, Henry Kwapis, Solomonophonic and Vaughn Oliver, broadened her collaborator pool considerably beyond the Alexander 23-centric Snow Angel sessions.
Rapp is signed to Interscope Records, a Universal Music Group label, with releases distributed by Interscope in the US and Polydor Records in some international markets. She signed with WME for talent representation in November 2022; a 2026 Deadline report on her casting in The Morning Show specifies she is represented by "WME, Sloane, Offer & Dern" for her acting career. Her mother, Denise Rapp, serves as her business manager, a role Rapp has said she trusts implicitly. Album credits list additional management figures including Adam Mersel, Priscilla Felten, Bella Ronson and Jordan Mamalakis on Bite Me's liner notes, with A&R for her Interscope releases handled by Sam Riback, Lillia Parsa and Kelly Noe. In February 2025, L'Oréal Paris named Rapp a global brand ambassador, with the brand's global president citing her Paris concert crowd's devotion as a factor in the decision.
Rapp identified as bisexual in a 2022 interview, then came out as a lesbian in a February 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. That same season, as *SNL* musical guest in January 2024, she made a nervous, last-minute request to writer Celeste Yim to change her sketch introduction line from "bisexual" to "gay," a moment that became a widely covered public coming-out. She has since spoken about "constantly" dealing with internalized homophobia even post-coming out, and has publicly pushed back at fans and other celebrities, including a public spat with Betty Who, who questioned or minimized her sexuality. In June 2025 she served as a grand marshal for WorldPride DC alongside Laverne Cox.
Rapp dated fellow Broadway actor Antonio Cipriano from 2019 to 2021 and TikTok personality Alissa Carrington from January to October 2023. She has been in a relationship with British musician Towa Bird since early 2024, confirmed via red-carpet appearances, including the pair's public debut as a couple at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar party, and continued public appearances into 2026.
Rapp's professional name is stylized "Reneé," with the accent over the second "e" rather than the grammatically standard French spelling, a detail that has generated persistent online commentary and confusion, though she has confirmed it is her legal, given name rather than a stylized rebrand. She has said her full performing name is "Reneé Mary Jane Rapp," though her actual legal middle name is simply "Jane"; "Mary Jane" was invented in tribute to her grandmother, also named Mary Jane, crossed with her love of Spider-Man's Mary Jane Watson. She has also joked about being a "fake vegan," having kept the diet for two real years before giving it up.
Rapp received two MTV VMA nominations, for Best New Artist and PUSH Performance of the Year, as of 2025 reporting. She was widely tipped as a possible Best New Artist Grammy contender for the 2026 ceremony but was ultimately snubbed from nominations, according to USA Today's analysis of Grammy surprises, despite Bite Me's UK No. 1 and US top-3 debut. As of mid-2025 reporting, Rapp's Spotify monthly listeners were cited at roughly 5 to 8 million depending on the snapshot, including a documented 2-million jump after "Leave Me Alone" dropped, with cumulative career streams exceeding 2.2 billion according to StreamClout tracking, and Kworb chart data listing over 1.58 billion total Spotify streams for her catalog as lead artist, as of late 2025.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Snow Angel, US Billboard 200 peak | No. 44 (18,000 units, first week) |
| Snow Angel, UK Albums Chart peak | No. 7 |
| Bite Me, US Billboard 200 peak | No. 3 (64,000 units, first week) |
| Bite Me, UK Albums Chart peak | No. 1 (15,643 units) |
| Bite Me, US Top Album Sales peak | No. 1 (47,000 copies sold, incl. 30,000 vinyl) |
| Career cumulative streams | 2.2 billion+ (as of mid-2025) |
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2000 | Born January 10 in Huntersville, North Carolina. |
| 2018 | Wins the Blumey Award and the National Jimmy Award for Best Actress playing Sandra in Big Fish. |
| 2019 | Cast as Regina George in Broadway's Mean Girls; begins full-time in the role that September. |
| 2020 | Broadway shuts down for COVID-19; moves to Los Angeles. |
| 2021 | Premieres as Leighton Murray in The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max. |
| 2022 | Releases "Tattoos"; signs with Interscope Records (June) and WME (November); releases debut EP Everything to Everyone (November 11). |
| 2023 | Releases debut album Snow Angel (August 18) and its deluxe edition with Coco Jones (November); launches the Snow Hard Feelings Tour; exits College Girls as a main cast member. |
| 2024 | Comes out as a lesbian on SNL; Mean Girls film musical released; debuts as a couple with Towa Bird; headlines All Things Go's NYC debut. |
| 2025 | Named L'Oréal Paris global ambassador; releases Bite Me (August 1), her first US top-10 and first UK No. 1 album; launches the arena-scale Bite Me Tour; postpones Atlanta/Tampa dates due to illness; snubbed from 2026 Grammy nominations. |
| 2026 | Announces first Australian headline shows; joins The Morning Show Season 5 as recurring character Samantha; continues the Bite Me Tour through Europe, concluding in Dublin in March. |
She stepped back from her main cast role on The Sex Lives of College Girls in 2023 to focus on music, and did not return for Season 3, but she reprised Regina George for the 2024 Mean Girls film and, per a March 2026 Deadline report, joined The Morning Show Season 5 in a recurring role, indicating acting remains part of her career alongside music.
The accent placement over the second "e" rather than the first is her actual legal spelling, chosen by her mother for alliterative marketability before Rapp was born, not a later stylistic rebrand.
Alexander 23 (Alexander Glantz) has been her central creative partner across both studio albums, executive-producing Snow Angel and appearing on 11 of Bite Me's 12 tracks, though Bite Me widened the producer roster to include Omer Fedi, Julian Bunetta, Ryan Tedder and others.
No. Despite a UK No. 1 debut and a US top-3 Billboard 200 debut, Rapp was left out of the 2026 Grammy nominations after being widely considered a possible Best New Artist contender.
| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Everything to Everyone | EP |
| 2023 | Snow Angel | Studio album |
| 2023 | Snow Angel (Deluxe) | Deluxe reissue |
| 2025 | Bite Me | Studio album |
Further reading: Rapp's central production partnership with Alexander 23 and her collaborations with Amy Allen, Omer Fedi and Olivia Rodrigo place her within the same Los Angeles pop-songwriting circuit documented across other entries on this wiki, including major-label pop acts and the guitar-forward alt-pop scene surrounding it.