Culture

Drag Race fans were living for this week’s lip-sync

By Matt Moore

23rd January 2021

One of the bottom queens ATE IT UP!!!

After three consecutive episodes of no consequences, RuPaul finally started sending girls home, and if the first lip-sync is anything to go by then we could be in for one of the best seasons of Drag Race ever.

Like with previous seasons where the girls are initially split into two groups, the queens finally reunite and immediately start kiki-ing, at least until Miss Elliott with 2 Ts revealed she was never eliminated and wanted to know why the Porkchop queens thought she should go packing.

And when Tamisha explained her reasons, Elliott snapped back, and given how much of the Drag Race fandom are Tamisha stans, this might not be an endearing move from her.

RuPaul then split the queens into three groups to overact in scripted holiday films for the RuPaulmark Channel, celebrating iconic holidays like Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day and, um, Flag Day.

Keen to emulate her challenge win from last week, Denali took on the main role in Misery Love’s Company, but in a clear case of biting off more than she could chew, she flubbed a lot of her lines, while Kahmora Hall gave a wooden performance as Ash the ash tree, just not in a good way.

For God Loves Flags, LaLa Ri sunk into the background, while Symone STOLE the show. Honestly, she can lip-sync, has amazing looks, and with acting like that, Symone is the full triple threat! Rosé also delivered, while Utica was just there.

For April Fool’s Rush In, the show was unsurprisingly stolen by Kandy Muse who absolutely shone as the hilarious Whoopi Cushion, making us forget about everyone else in the scene, apart from the legendary Tamisha Iman who similarly shone as a Cher fortune-teller.

On the runway, the category was Trains for Days and so many queens slayed the runway with Symone, Kahmora, Gottmik, Denali, LaLa and Joey Jay having looks that are sure to become iconic.

Elliott with 2 Ts, Olivia Lux, Utica, Gottmik, Joey Jay, Tamisha Iman and Tina Burner were all declared safe. The judges critiqued Denali, LaLa and Kahmora for their performances, while praising their runway looks, while Rosé and Kandy were praised for their performances, but were let down for their runway looks.

The one queen who got universal praise (and justly) was Symone, who took her second challenge win and has properly set herself up to win and won a whole army of fans. Seriously, you throw a stone at DragCon and you will hit a Symone stan.

The only thing fans were talking about alongside Symone was that lip-sync between Denali and Kahmora. In the past, week one lip-syncs like Akashia vs. Porkchop, Serena ChaCha vs. Penny Tration, Nicky Doll vs. Dahlia Sin haven’t been worth returning to. But Denali has changed the game.

The second 100% Pure Love by Crystal Waters started playing, Denali started stealing all attention. Not since Peppermint vs. Cynthia Lee Fontaine has a lip-sync been so one-sided, with Denali bringing every ounce of fun and energy to the song that she could muster, while Kahmora just walked around the stage in her admittedly restricting look.

As RuPaul said, Denali served “100% fun” and gave her the quickest shantay you stay in HERstory.

And as our headline says, fans LIVED for Denali’s performance. Last season’s Jan enthused: “THAT IS ONE OF THE BEST LIP SYNCS IN DRAG RACE HISTORY.”

And another fan added: “Conspiracy theory, they put Denali in the bottom so she could deliver us a lipsync.”

https://twitter.com/calimadu/status/1352810443224604672

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