Bebe Rexha Goes Deeper: 'People Need Real Right Now'

By Jack Irvin


As Bebe Rexha settles into a Zoom call from her Los Angeles house, I preface our interview by letting her know it’s “for Rexhars and Bad Bitches only,” referencing a 2017 viral clip in which the pop star yells at “perverts” telling her to “take [her] clothes off” in the comments of a Instagram Live chat. “Yay! Finally,” Rexha says, unwrapping a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup right after a long day of press. “Now let’s get the real fucking talking out.”


Rexha isn’t afraid to mention exactly what she’s thinking, also it shows in her songwriting. On confessional hits “I’m a Mess” and “Me, Myself & I” with G-Eazy, she sings candidly about her experiences with anxiety, depression, and self-acceptance. It also appears in her social media presence, which features equally candid and often unfiltered discourse with fans, along with funny photos and clips that are frequent fodder for stan Twitter memes. Where some viral videos capture her making “power-bitch moves,” as once she’s caught confidently strutting in a bright red suit, others find her conquer with emotion: In one clip, she covers her face with her hands and whines throughout an interview. Rexha is well-aware of her tendency to freely express her thoughts and emotions, yet how does she feel as soon as these weak moments are shared among the masses?


“I’ve seen them some days, like the one of me crying... [And] the ‘pervert’ one I know, nevertheless I didn’t know how big it became up until I had people coming to my shows and saying it to me,” Rexha tells MTV News. “If I look good and it’s pretty, yeah, I like it. However if I look like shit and they’re making fun of me, no.”


Prior to our conversation, Rexha didn’t know the “power bitch moves” video had made the rounds online, although with her sophomore LP Better Mistakes — her most liberated body of work to date — out in the world as of last week, she says the album definitely counts as one. “A power-bitch move to me is anything that requires putting yourself out there,” she says. “This album is a power-boss-bitch move.”


Better Mistakes comes nearly three years soon following the release of her debut album Expectations, a gap elongated by changes to the pop star’s team. (She signed to Salxco Management in September 2020.) As she started to craft the new project, Rexha wanted it to stay in the same catchy, susceptible realm of the self-deprecating “I’m a Mess,” which she feels “most connected to” of her catalog of hits. From then on, she was inspired to write songs like the piano-driven, self-destructive “Sabotage” and rock-laced “Break My Heart Myself,” which opens the album with direct references to her experience living with bipolar disorder, taking Klonopin to remedy its indications, and fearing her own intrusive thoughts. Through her no-holds-barred lyricism and openness about her bipolar diagnosis, which she shared publicly in 2019, she’s routinely been sincere with fans about her mental health. Nevertheless right now she’s letting listeners into her head like never before.


“When I was younger, I would have loved to have somebody to look up to that was open about [mental health], so I didn't feel so alone,” she says. “It’s something that'll routinely be a piece of me, and I was thinking if I'm real with my fans, maybe there's somebody out there who will listen to it and it'll help them.”


Writing about these often-taboo topics comes conveniently to Rexha, a seasoned songwriter who’s also penned hits for superstar artists like Selena Gomez (“Like a Champion,” “Crowded Room”), along with Eminem and Rihanna (“The Monster”). Although, she still gets pangs of nervousness before releasing such intimate tracks about her mental health due to how they affect one listener in particular. “My mother, for some reason, feels like she made a mistake and fucked up in some way,” she says. Rexha wrote the Queen-sampling track “Mama” about her mom’s endless support. “I love her to this day. She gets a little bit furious Whenever I put songs out [about my mental health], nevertheless I'm a grown woman right now, and people need real right now.”


Rexha was nearly done with Better Mistakes prior to the pandemic, nevertheless immediately after its onset, she determined to take more time to sit with it. Then, she began to feel “really bored” and tired of the compositions’ gloomy nature, so she added songs like the club-ready “Sacrifice” and trap crooner “Amore.” These brought bursts of positive, upbeat energy to the project’s eclectic set of pop, dance, hip-hop, rock, and option sounds. “I’m like genre-fluid or something,” Rexha declares. “It’s painful for somebody to be like, ‘You have to write one whole album and have it all be one genre.’ Like, I would literally lose my shit.”


One of the only genres she opted to avoid on the album is nation, despite the fact that her 2017 single “Meant to Be” with Florida Georgia Line is her biggest hit, with 50 weeks at No. 1 on nation radio, a Grammy nomination, and more recently, a Diamond certification from the RIAA for 10 million units sold. “That was a song that lives on its own,” she says, noting that she “wasn’t in the mood” to further explore play with its stripped, plucky tunes this time around, though she’s considering a Nashville writing trip in the near future. In several ways, her foray into Western styles was unexpected, as was the monstrous success of “Meant to Be.” “We did not follow any rules whatsoever,” she adds. “I don’t like following rules.”


She shared the same sentiment working on Better Mistakes by doing what comes obviously to her, and has just so happened to score her several — often unpredictable — hits in the past: networking with with other musicians. She gathered a crowd of artists she admires and who simply “felt right” for the record, including Travis Barker (“Break My Heart Myself”), Ty Dolla $ign and Trevor Daniel (“My Dear Love”), Lil Uzi Vert (“Die For a Man”), Doja Cat (“Baby I’m Jealous”), Pink Sweat$ and Lunay (“On the Go”), and Rick Ross (“Amore”). Flexing her curatorial skills, the inclusion of such high-profile features makes the album sound like a top Spotify playlist, a savvy move in today’s listening climate.


Rexha also wants to uplift other artists with her work, hosting the annual Women in Harmony events to bring with each other ladies in the music industry to discuss their experiences. She hopes to collaborate with several more females in the future, and an appearance by Doja Cat on Better Mistakes (“I love her vibe. She’s a magnificent person,” she says) is a begin. “With ladies, there’s still a sense of competitiveness in this industry, and it’s really sad,” she says. “I visualize a lot of other artists who also mention they support girls, and I know them beyond the scenes, and so they don't. They're not what they mention they are, and that's really shitty.”


Though Rexha still experiences “moments of self-doubt,” she says she’s “definitely in a higher end place” with her mental health today than she was while writing Better Mistakes. Although even the fact that she’s also been in a relationship with filmmaker Keyan Safyari since last year doesn’t drive the musician to write about bright subjects like love. As an alternative, the album features lyrics that chronicle feelings of emptiness and bring a touch of cheekiness to emotional highs and lows (“I know that it’s crazy to perish for you, nevertheless I’d do it tonight,” she sings on “Death Row.”), Making for a dark, edgy listen. “I thrive in darker, minor keys, and darker lyrics and concepts,” she says. “I’m good with my love life, nevertheless I can’t write a love song. It’s really hard for me.”


once she felt some of the classic sophomore-album pressure to recapture the success of her debut, above all else Rexha set out to prepare each song on Better Mistakes without creative restraint or extreme-hit potential in mind. “Right right now, it's more about writing songs that make me happy, and to really keep defining who I am as an artist,” she says. “Then if the song blows up, that's even more incredible. Nevertheless if not, it doesn't define me as a human.” Right now that the album’s out, although, how does Rexha desire to be defined as an artist? “Like I do whichever the fuck I want,” she says. “I want people to be like, ‘What’s Bebe going to do next?’”