00:00 You know that song?
00:00 My first kiss went a little like this.
00:04 And so I was like, this would be a lovely
00:06 little Facebook status for me right now.
00:08 Hey guys, what's up?
00:09 It's Renee Rapp and today I'm going to be reminiscing
00:12 on all my firsts with Elle.
00:15 My first time on stage was I think when I was three
00:19 and it was my first year of doing competition dance,
00:22 which by the way is a lot like dance mom's culture.
00:26 If you were curious to put your child in dance,
00:28 just be very careful.
00:30 I remember a lot of running around in big concrete rooms
00:35 that were backstage areas and stuff
00:38 and the energy was tough.
00:40 People are intense.
00:41 There was one time where this girl that I was dancing with,
00:44 her mom yelled to her younger sister,
00:47 get the Gatorade!
00:48 It was a very intense thing.
00:49 She's a kid, it's okay.
00:51 She's fine.
00:52 We're doing tap, not surgery.
00:57 My first celebrity encounter was when I was in high school,
01:00 I did this festival called the Funk Fest,
01:04 which is like a touring R&B festival
01:06 and it came to Charlotte.
01:08 I, for whatever reason, ended up performing that day
01:12 and opening up for everybody that night,
01:14 which in hindsight is just ridiculous
01:16 and I had no business being there.
01:18 But I met Erykah Badu and I was so excited
01:23 because I love her more than anything
01:26 and she's also so tiny.
01:27 She's so cute.
01:28 Her hat is so huge.
01:29 My first big break was in Mean Girls on Broadway.
01:34 How did I feel when I landed the role?
01:36 I remember feeling nothing
01:38 because I was really stressed
01:41 about wanting to become a pop star
01:43 and I was auditioning for a bunch of musical theater
01:45 and so I was deciding between Mean Girls
01:48 and the other show.
01:49 I was literally fighting to do it.
01:51 I was fighting to do it.
01:53 It was Magic Mike Live, the musical,
01:55 and I was hell bent on it.
01:56 I was like, I must play the titular role.
02:00 Not of Mike, of the girlfriend.
02:01 I was like, I gotta do it.
02:02 And my parents were like, what are you doing?
02:04 They were like, are you stupid?
02:06 'Cause it was just in development
02:07 and it was gonna be like a two week lab.
02:09 So I remember being just heartbroken
02:11 that I wasn't going to be in Magic Mike Live,
02:13 the musical, the movie, the musical.
02:15 So then I chose a different, the movie, the musical,
02:16 the movie, the musical instead.
02:18 Yeah, then I did Mean Girls.
02:19 So I just remember feeling like,
02:21 I gotta talk to Channing Tatum.
02:24 My first time being recognized in public.
02:27 So when I was in high school,
02:28 there was a Bryson Tiller song
02:30 that had sampled an old song.
02:32 Two of my friends recorded me doing this riff
02:35 and it became a thing online.
02:38 And I was like, oh cute.
02:39 I was like, this is my first little viral moment.
02:41 Oh, I was excited.
02:43 And I remember being out in Charlotte
02:46 and somebody was like, are you that girl that sings?
02:49 And I was like,
02:50 I am.
02:53 What about it?
02:54 I was so excited.
02:54 I was so excited.
02:55 And then all the comments started getting super brutal
02:57 'cause they were like, she doesn't have a lot of lip.
02:59 Where's her upper lip?
03:00 That sits with me to this day.
03:01 But that was my first moment getting recognized in public.
03:04 If you do watch the video,
03:05 it does look like I have no upper lip.
03:07 First song I wrote for the new album is 23,
03:10 which is the last track on the album
03:12 and closes it out in the most perfect way.
03:14 I wrote it on January 9th of this year,
03:17 the day before I turned 23.
03:18 I hate how I feel before my birthday.
03:21 I just don't feel great
03:22 and I feel awkward and weird
03:25 and all my friends hate me and my parents hate me,
03:28 which is not true.
03:29 And so I was like,
03:30 I gotta write a song about the birthday scaries.
03:32 And we did.
03:33 And Alexander told me a couple months later,
03:35 he was like, I almost said we cannot write that song
03:39 so many times as we were writing it that day.
03:41 'Cause he was like, I can't be Alexander 23
03:43 and have co-written a song called 23.
03:45 And I'm so glad he didn't say anything
03:46 'cause we didn't know each other at the time.
03:48 We weren't cool.
03:49 If he would have said that, I would have been like,
03:50 oh my God, yeah, no, for sure.
03:51 I didn't even wanna write it anyway.
03:54 My first kiss, I remember very well
03:56 because it was quite an event in my household.
03:58 It was with Ryan Riggs, who was a friend of mine,
04:01 who I was dating at the time in sixth grade.
04:04 Hello, my love.
04:06 I remember this all vividly because, you know that song?
04:10 ♪ My first kiss went a little like this ♪
04:14 I was like, this would be a lovely little Facebook status
04:17 for me right now, because I had just had my first kiss.
04:19 And so I put on Facebook.
04:21 I was like, my first kiss went a little like this.
04:24 And then a little emoji.
04:26 So my mother got on my Facebook
04:28 and was like, in this household?
04:30 And so she was super unhappy with that.
04:32 And I had to take the post down.
04:33 I was trying to be out there from a very young age.
04:36 It's all about the marketing, you know?
04:39 First artist that inspired me to make music
04:41 is Beyonce, hands down.
04:43 I just remember being so blown away and determined
04:46 every single time that I would see her perform.
04:49 My favorite Beyonce song is "Hello."
04:51 I know, I know, I know, controversial.
04:53 It served a place in my life in high school.
04:55 And so it's my favorite song
04:56 'cause it sits in a very specific place in my youth.
05:00 The first TikTok I ever made
05:03 was probably some terribly cringey video I made
05:07 in my New York apartment when I was 19.
05:11 I got a TikTok in November of 2019
05:13 'cause my dad had been down my throat
05:16 about me getting that app
05:17 'cause he was talking to one of my friends
05:19 who was an influencer at the time,
05:21 who was like, "If your daughter wants to have anything
05:23 "in this music business, she must get on Musical.ly."
05:26 And my dad was like, "All right."
05:28 And so he kept hounding me to get this app called Musical.ly.
05:31 And I was like, "That is so dumb."
05:32 I was like, "I'm not getting that."
05:34 So I got a TikTok.
05:35 I don't remember what my first video was,
05:37 but I remember I made a lot of videos at Mean Girls.
05:39 And I tried to do little trends,
05:43 and I put those weird-ass filters on there.
05:45 Called it a day.
05:46 My first heartbreak was when I was in fifth grade,
05:50 and it was this guy.
05:52 I don't even think I really liked,
05:54 but everybody liked him.
05:56 And he was one of those types that was like,
05:58 you know, lanky, cigarette-looking boy,
06:00 and had brown, swoopy hair.
06:04 And Justin Bieber was God at the time.
06:07 And so I was like, "He is just so cute."
06:09 I think we dated, and I think he broke up with me.
06:13 And I was baffled.
06:14 Actually, looking back on it,
06:15 there's no way he broke up with me.
06:17 I think I did break up with him.
06:18 That being said, I made sure that the heartbreak
06:20 was on my part, and I was the victim.
06:23 My first red carpet was [laughs]
06:27 the Freaky Friday, the musical, the movie, premiere.
06:30 Okay, by the way, the musical, the movie,
06:32 the musical, the movie is just such a [beep] theme
06:34 in my life.
06:35 And I wore hot pink heels, open toe,
06:39 and a black bandeau from Topshop,
06:42 and some I.M.Gia pants.
06:44 How do I remember this?
06:45 And then they had a big silver chain on the side.
06:48 I did my own makeup and my own hair.
06:51 I mean, I just looked crazy.
06:52 But I was like, "Oh my God, a movie.
06:54 "How cute of me."
06:56 It was really intimidating, and also very humbling,
06:59 'cause you walk down the carpet,
07:00 and there's a bunch of interviewers,
07:01 and they were incredibly not interested.
07:03 And I was like, "Cool, I didn't wanna talk to you either."
07:06 My first embarrassing moment on stage,
07:08 I feel like I was nine,
07:09 and there was a Junior Cabaret at Theatre Charlotte,
07:12 which is the community theater that I used to do stuff at
07:14 when I was a kid.
07:15 And I was doing "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5,
07:17 except it was a solo.
07:20 I was all five of 'em.
07:22 [laughs]
07:23 Completely forgot the words.
07:25 Completely forgot.
07:26 Black out forgot.
07:27 Couldn't find 'em if they hit me in the face.
07:29 And my parents are very judgmental.
07:31 They love me, to be clear,
07:32 but they're very judgmental.
07:33 Like, you know, if I missed a note growing up,
07:35 it was like, "Ah, that was sharp," right?
07:37 So I forgot all the words, and I was so sad.
07:41 I was so sad.
07:42 And so I'm literally on stage, like, crying, like,
07:44 ♪ If you should ever find someone new ♪
07:49 [screams]
07:50 And I just started freaking out.
07:52 And my dad was like, "Yeah,
07:54 "that one really got away from you, little girl."
07:56 [laughs]
07:58 And I was like, "Yeah, Dad."
07:59 I was like, "It's so sad."
08:00 And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, that was sad."
08:04 And I was like, "Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool."
08:05 But I ate what I did remember.
08:07 My first music video was eons ago
08:11 that I personally shot.
08:13 I had a hamster when I was younger named Hammy.
08:15 And me and my cousin Joe used to dress the hamster up.
08:18 We shot videos, movies, music videos,
08:21 and one of them was "Hammy Goes to War,"
08:23 and the other one was "Hammy in the Kitchen,"
08:25 and it was like a Guy Fieri kind of thing.
08:27 And then we shot a music video with Hammy
08:30 where she was a pop star, a legend in the making.
08:32 My first music video in my career,
08:35 a video that will never see the light of day.
08:37 And I'm sure now that I've said that,
08:39 somebody will resurface and find it,
08:41 which is super good for me.
08:42 I had this song in high school that I did called "Hell No,"
08:47 and I did shoot a music video for it.
08:49 And it is the worst thing ever.
08:52 I was watching TV one day,
08:54 and it came on in an insurance commercial.
08:58 And I was like, "Excuse me?"
09:01 And I guess the guy who shot the video
09:02 had like stole his footage to some insurance company.
09:06 They didn't even use the song, though.
09:08 They weren't even plugging my song.
09:09 It was just like a picture of me on the beach
09:11 like, "Yeah, top 10 things I regret in my life.
09:15 "That and traumatizing my hamster."
09:17 Thanks so much for hanging out with me and Elle today.
09:19 Make sure you check out my new album, "Snow Angel," now.
09:23 (upbeat music)
09:26 [music]
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