Rupaul’s new album Butch Queen is song after song of thumping beats to grind your hips to and full of biting shade to fiercely snap your fingers to. It’s a wet dream for any gay house music fan or clubbing drag queen. Unfortunately, I am neither of those. I don’t think house music is really music at all, it’s just noise that DJs spin. DJs just remix beats and chop up lyrics to fit the sound but where’s the story? Butch Queen feels to me like Rupaul gave DJs the keys to his musical archives and Drag Race vaults so they could recycle some classic lines into their music and Ru could sit back and wait for the royalty checks to come rolling in.”You got some money for me?”
On Butch Queen, each song has a featured artist except “U Wear It Well” which is the solo Ru we’ve come to know and love. Unfortunately on most of the songs, the guest artists over power Ru, which is surprising and not easy to do. I didn’t buy the album to hear any other singers but Ru…and maybe Taylor Dayne. Their song “Be Someone” is by far the tiara on the top of this Butch Queen. Ru’s famous infectious laugh starts us out on “Cha Cha Bitch”, his sass shines on “Category Is…”, and only in a Rupaul song (“Drag Queen Honey”) would you ever hear the line “That’s just Ol’ Smeller, he’s perfectly harmless, he likes to jack off while smelling girls farts!” Even with all that going for it, this isn’t the Rupaul standard of quality I’m used to.
I guess Rupaul shot his load of fairy dust on this last holiday season’s album Sleigh Belles and preparing for the 8th season of Drag Race. There’s only so much fabulous spunk to go around. In my gay opinion, Butch Queen is the musical equivalent of a porn compilation video, full of happy endings but without a plot to get excited over.
