“On April 13, 2017, VH1 renewed the series for a tenth season, tentatively scheduled to begin airing in March 2018.”
[Video]
[5.83]
Thomas Inskeep: I will grant that if you’re not a RuPaul’s Drag Race fan, this may not do much for you. But at the same time, as a big fan of RPDR myself, this is easily one of my favorite records of the year. The track itself is a simple, stripped-down NYC house track; Ferrino is also the man behind last year’s “Purse First” for Season 8 winner Bob the Drag Queen, but this time, he took the music in a different direction than that death-dropping vogue track. The admittedly clunky title “C.L.A.T.” stands for “Club Legend Art Theatre,” each noun referencing one of the four queens here, the NYC queens from Season 9 of RPDR. They include this season’s top two finishers, runner-up Peppermint (Legend) and winner Sasha Velour (Art), along with Aja (Club) and Alexis Michelle (Theatre). Each gets her own verse, lyrically very much in each queen’s style, with Aja even getting Ferrino to switch up the beat for her final verse, fitting as she’s the young’un club kid. Michelle is the Broadway dame, Peppermint the NYC legend (she’s been a drag star in the city for over a decade), and Velour the arty one (she often performs bald, for starters). Each verse makes perfect sense for each of the queens, and all that’s really required of Ferrino’s beat is just to keep things moving. Many of the lines here are memorable as hell (especially Velour’s “Gender is a construct/Tear it apart!”), and no song has been stuck in my head in 2017 as much as this one. If you love house, and/or if you love drag queens (and especially RPDR), you need this in your life.
[10]
Katie Gill: How fitting that the ‘T’ stands for ‘theater.’ There’s this concept in musical theater called the “I am” song, where a character sings out their motivations as well as aspects of their personality. It’s things like “Not For the Life of Me”, “My Strongest Suit”, “Man of La Mancha”, “Master of the House”, and so forth. “C.L.A.T.” is one of those, giving each of the queens a verse to talk about who they are, show off their personality, and show off their vocal chops. Does it do much else? Not really! The beat is stale and the chorus is confusing. But it spectacularly succeeds at the “I am” bit that I can’t fault it as much for the song’s other failings.
[6]
Alex Clifton: I can’t really call this a great song. RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni such as Adore Delano and Alaska have put together much stronger tracks that are dancier, catchier, and better song. However, this song gets points from me solely due to Sasha Velour’s verse and the line “gender is a construct, tear it apart.” Yaaaaasssss! We need more songs calling for the destruction of gender binaries. The rest of “C.L.A.T.” is uneven to say the least–that chorus is awful, since none of their singing voices work well together, Peppermint’s outro goes on too long, and the repetition of “C.L.A.T.” as an actual word makes me want to die–but it’s oddly charming.
[5]
Cassy Gress: “C.L.A.T.” is only about four minutes long but it felt substantially longer to me for some reason; I don’t think it’s any of the queens’ faults, and I’m not even sure it’s DJ Mitch’s fault. It’s got that early 90s house vibe that mostly brings to mind RuPaul (for obvious reasons), but “Supermodel” inspires you to be fantastic by exhorting you to do it, and “C.L.A.T.” aims to do the same by just talking about how great they are. Which, they are great! And I’m on board with tearing apart gender and reads better than hairy and/or Harry, but this just sort of flows around me without actually smacking me in the face. It makes me feel like a lame old fart, but I guess I relate better to the song that was my first exposure to non-cis culture, back when I was 10.
[5]
Will Adams: Because most of the RuPaul’s Drag Race periphery (arguably more important than the show itself) exists on YouTube, the subculture moves at breakneck speed; within hours of new content, there is already a slew of inside jokes, references, and accepted truths splattered across the comments section. This is why the music feels increasingly less significant; I won’t fault it for existing purely to enhance its performers’ branding and career, but as with “Purse First,” the novelty factor is diminishing. As a song, “C.L.A.T.” is unremarkable — the season 9 queens, whose rapping skills range from perfectly suitable (Aja) to verging on arrhythmic (Alexis Michelle), fawn over New York (another sour note for me; I’ll never see what anyone does) while Mitch Ferrino doles out some basic vogue-ready house. At this point, fans are already chirping about who is slated to be on the show’s tenth season and its third all-star season — they will have their own iconic moments, and we will similarly forget what preceded it.
[5]
Claire Biddles: Cheap house is always fun and “Don’t need a museum, this club is enough” is a killer line, but I’m too indifferent to drag in general and RuPaul’s Drag Race specifically to really get this.
[4]