Exzenya follows up her satirical pop-R&B single “Drunk Texting,” inspired by a real chaotic Miami trip involving her son, with a hard pivot into blues-rock on “B!tch Please,” out September 3rd. The song is written from the exact moment a door opens on the woman who slept with her husband, and rather than falling apart, the narrator clocks the situation for what it is: a bad trade all around, a sugar-daddy fantasy on one side and a man who’ll wander off on the other exactly the same way he did with her. It’s less a breakup song than a karma song, summed up in its own key line: “You thought you were taking my life. You set me free.”
The vocals here are filtered in a way that gives the track an interesting texture, something close to the radio effect heard on certain Arctic Monkeys songs, or the kind of treatment metal and alt bands sometimes use to open a track. Exzenya‘s delivery moves between spoken word and actual singing throughout, a style that’s become something of a signature for her, echoing an approach she’s used before on songs like “International Power.” It suits the material well here, giving the storytelling a conversational, almost confrontational edge that fits a song built entirely around one woman refusing to shrink in the moment she’s supposed to.
Musically, it sits comfortably in the roots-rock lane she’s aiming for, blues in the chords, a live-band feel, sass taking priority over polish, the kind of sound that puts her in company with artists like Kaleo, Barns Courtney and ZZ Ward without losing her own identity in the comparison. “B!tch Please” makes a strong case that Exzenya‘s range extends well past the satirical register of her breakout single, into something with real teeth.
