Review: RuPaul Kicks Off The New Year With “Black Butta”
The global drag phenomenon serves comfortable, easy jams on her fifteenth record.
Happy 2023 everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday and you’re ready for another year of new reviews. January is always a tricky month, though, because big projects rarely drop so soon in the year.
Fortunately, one artist seems to love the first week of January to put out new music because she does it every year, and that artist is drag queen supermodel of the world, RuPaul.
RuPaul hasn’t aimed to get a Billboard hit since the early 90s; that is not what her albums are designed for. Instead, she always releases a new album to coincide with the latest season of her hit reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race, of which I am a woefully obsessed fan. This allows her to incorporate her newest original music in the show (the bitch knows marketing if nothing else).
That’s exactly the formula on display for Ru’s fifteenth album, Black Butta. She packs everything she’ll need on just ten tracks for the many episodes of Drag Race this year. We get new runway songs, new anthems to confidence and self-love, and even a Christmas song for the inevitable 2023 holiday special.
