Queen Bee
Honey Bear
Original Release Date: 11/01/2031
The following first appeared in Issue #4 of Heart Beets.
New Bear City. 2021.
She was working as a waitress at the Buzzworthy Café in Madison Heights, one of the more northern, more isolated neighborhoods of NBC. She would arrive before 5 AM, before the sun had had its own cup of coffee, and would set up the stools, wipe down the tables, and brew the first round of pots for the day. It wouldn’t be long until the chaos of hundreds of customers swung through the cute, bell-laden door.
Fancy orders and strange combinations buzzed through the register: an iced, honey twist; a blueberry muffin from Hi Bear Nation; a decaf with sixteen shots of espresso. Each one netted her another few Space Bucks in her tip jar but no one really paid attention to her. They just dropped the extra change in a hive-shaped bucket and grumbled their way to the underground railway station.
Her first break would not come until 12 PM, and by that time the pizza parlor across the street, Chianello’s, was already pumping with excitement. Through the blur of hungry patrons, dressed in an oversized, pepperoni and green pepper slice costume, was none other than Pizza Bear. With his ratty and squeaky bike waddling down the street towards 10th Avenue, pizza boxes stacked nearly over his head, the future beatmaker passed the smudged windows of the Buzzworthy Café.
Every day, for two years, she had watched the resilient bear bust his furry butt up and down the city, delivering piping hot pies to salivating customers. And for two years, she had attempted to summon the courage to talk to him.
She would never admit what changed that fateful day.
As she entered the tiny footprint of Chianello’s, the stench of yeast and mozzarella clogging her nostrils, she kindly asked for Pizza Bear’s whereabouts.
“He quit. This morning.”
She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t even upset. She had missed her opportunity; a lesson, she assured herself, that she could learn from. That night, as she sat on her fire escape and sipped honey-drenched tea, she looked up into the starless night (due to the heavy light and air pollution) and wondered what could have been. A shooting star suddenly tumbled across the sky, twinkling brightly as it followed the curvature of the planet.
She wished more than anything to have a single moment with Pizza Bear. Just to say hello. She retreated to her den that night and hummed a melody which she played along to on her keyboard. She marked down the harmony in her notebook and crawled into bed.
The next day, it was all over the news. Pizza Bear had dropped the year’s biggest album seemingly out of nowhere. Newspapers were going crazy, Madison Heights was already rolling out the red carpet. But how had this happened? She never knew anything about his musical talents, let alone that he was dropping an album. The album.
Pizza Bear would return to NBC and Chianello’s occasionally, but no one knew where he kept his home, and no one seemed to be able to track him down. Determined to meet him, one way or another, she got to work.
Declining shifts at the Buzzworthy Café, she worked tirelessly for almost ten years, honing her craft and recording in her bedroom for hours at a time. She witnessed the disastrous release of Sleepy Bear, the return of Regularly Scheduled Bear, the massive hits that were Average Bear and Circus Bear. As the former pizza delivery bear hurtled further and further into superstardom, she was abandoned in the massive crater left behind.
However, on November 1st, the artist known as Honey Bear will finally unleash her debut album, Queen Bee. Pizza Bear, our friend, you should start looking over your shoulder.
Melding the smooth vibes of New Bear City with the earnestness of its new star beatmaker, Queen Bee is at once a reminder of the harshness of the city, but also its timeless beauty. If 30 Minutes Or Less was an ode to slumming it on the streets, Queen Bee was a love letter to rising above its clatter.
The Intergalactic Beets Project is proud to have both of these artists among our celebrated discography, but the meeting of these two powerhouse bears has yet to be announced. However, we don’t yet know if Honey Bear will have time in her busy schedule to meet her biggest fan…
Side A
Queen Bee
Hot Honey
Bee Yourself
Hive Mind
Side B
Drone City Takeover
Black & Gold
Comb On Over
Buzz/Bomb