When you have been usually utilizing TikTok for the previous few years, you’ve in all probability stumbled throughout Chrissy Chlapecka’s movies. With their energetically baby-voiced supply and vibrant pink hair (and outfits), Chlapecka (who makes use of each she/her and so they/them pronouns) has been main the cost on reclaiming the pejorative “bimbo” as a time period of self-empowerment for the “women, gays, and theys” following their account.
In breathy movies, Chlapecka is dressed up in mini-skirts and bikini tops, cheekily espousing sex-positive affirmations and proudly shifting the narrative round a phrase that had been negatively tossed at popular culture’s most derided and misunderstood figures, from Marilyn Monroe to Pamela Anderson.
Whereas Chlapecka is certainly one of many influencers rehabbing the time period, they’ve been dominating that nook of TikTok for the final couple years. Now they’re able to parlay viral fame into making their long-held music-driven ambitions come true.
“I actually needed to be a Broadway star,” Chlapecka, who cites Bernadette Peters as an early inspiration, tells Rolling Stone over Zoom. They majored in musical theater for a semester in school earlier than taking a unique strategy to reaching a future within the highlight.
“I didn’t need to really feel very confined by the field I believe musical theater may put you in,” they are saying. “Not that it’s a foul field to be in, however I simply noticed myself being someone exterior of that…somebody with pink hair and tattoos and all the pieces like that.”
Chlapecka breaks freed from any field with the discharge of “I’m So Scorching,” their debut single, which dropped final week. Since starting to advertise the music on TikTok in January, the response has been overwhelmingly optimistic and hungry for the catchy new tune to make its mark. Reminiscent of the shimmery early-Aughts club-pop of Britney Spears’ Blackout period and Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind,” “I’m So Scorching” is an attractive dance anthem that would make Chlapecka a robust contender for pop’s subsequent It Woman.
The 22-year-old started working towards their musical ambitions final yr, taking month-to-month flights from Chicago to L.A. to work out of studios with buddies like producer Kundo and the DJ Alex Chapman, who helped Chlapecka discover their voice. In August, Chlapecka linked up particularly with producer Dallas Caton and songwriter Alexandra Veltri and got here up with “I’m So Scorching,” one of many first songs they labored on collectively.
“We had related very quick,” Chlapecka says of co-writer Veltri. “It was already a protected atmosphere to only be artistic.” Sooner or later, they texted Veltri about wanting to put in writing a music with the road “I’m so sizzling I’d fuck myself” — Veltri requested Chlapecka save that one for her.
For Chlapecka, the music is emblematic of their very own self-confidence journey, which they are saying started across the age of 20 once they first joined TikTok and located hundreds (quickly to be hundreds of thousands) of people that supported them as they had been. “It’s nonetheless an on a regular basis wrestle and on a regular basis factor like I’m understanding, since you don’t turn out to be self-confident and love your self in a single day,” they are saying.
A part of loving themself has been coping with repercussions from sexual trauma they’ve endured. “It made me really feel like my physique is broken, which isn’t true, in fact,” Chlapecka says. “This music is a love letter to myself and anybody who has actually skilled troublesome instances with intercourse and loving themselves as a result of these are two actually, actually delicate issues.”
“I’m So Scorching” has already turn out to be their private “dangerous bitch anthem.” It’s an extension of the model Chlapecka has established on-line for his or her 5 million TikTok followers and past, one which reclaims intercourse and energy as one thing each private and delightful.
Developing, Chlapecka will movie a video for the only after which let folks hear the opposite songs they’ve been cooking up for the final a number of months. They anticipate two extra tracks to return out in April after which extra round Satisfaction Month in June. They’d like to put out an EP this yr as nicely.
“There will probably be far more music to return and a number of music similar to ‘I’m So Scorching,’” Chlapecka says, “so folks can get extra of that enjoyable, early 2000s vibe again.”