Eventually, the combination of a new environment, a parental divorce, and teenage hormones turned Rico from a regular emo kid to a troublesome kid. She began skipping school and selling drugs, but also began to follow in the footsteps of her idols and create her own music as an outlet to express her emotions. She dropped two mixtapes in high school, but her delinquent days came to a stop once she became pregnant with her son at 18. Rico told Fader in an interview how she remembers “I was sad because all the people who used to tell me to dream big started telling me to settle”. But she didn’t let this didn’t stop her, yet let it encourage her to create a name for herself through her music to provide for her son and continue to follow her dreams.
After high school, she continued to release cartoon and children show inspired beats and songs on Soundcloud like iCarly and Hey Arnold, which led her to begin gaining internet popularity. Her first single that truly made her take off from there was “Poppin”, which gained millions of views and featured on HBO tv show ‘Insecure’.
Everything took a turn for the better when Rico Nasty met Kenny Beats and they produced their first track together that took direct influence from rock, creating the gateway to a new genre: Trap Metal.
“I was still thinking the standard of a female rapper is supposed to be pretty.”… “Women aren’t all like that anymore. They’re doing what the fuck they want. Why still be pretty and all that when there’s so many girly female rappers already? You can be a rock star instead.”
Black people in entertainment are always expected to fit a societal standard of what Black people should be. Black female rappers are expected to be the “pretty popular girls”, but Rico choose to be her full self: the weird girl.
As she continued to work with Kenny Beats, she was eventually signed to Atlantic Records and released her first mixtape under that label: Nasty.
She’s gone on to do feature with artists like Doja Cat, Gucci Mane, Lil Yatchy, etc.
Rico Nasty dropped 5 mixtapes in high school,
Summer’s Eve
The Rico Story
Sugar Trap
Tales of Tacobella
Sugar Trap 2
She released her first mixtape under Atlantic Records called Nasty, second mixtape named Anger Management, and her debut studio album in 2020 named Nightmare Vacation
NASTY
Rico embraced her darker, wild side for her mixtape ‘Nasty’ (2018). She came into her true punk self as she introduced the alter ego to us named Trap Lavigne (her cool rockstar persona that followed after Tacobella, her softer rap side). Her music became grittier and distorted, with rockstar instrumentals.This is when she began to incorporate her influences in her music. Who inspires her musical personas?
Rico dedicates her entire career to Joan Jett, but takes heavy personality and appearance influence from
David Bowie’s style, Tyler, the Creator’s eccentric nature and fearlessness to be himself, Nicki Minaj’s male alter-ego Roman.
ANGER MANAGEMENT
In the early 1960s clinical psychologist Arthur Janov conceived of a new form of treatment for his patients called primal therapy. One of the most well known products of this therapy was the “primal scream”, which was a deep, almost involuntary emotional scream to release stress, trauma, etc. Rockstars soon after like John Lennon and Yoko Ono both found therapeutic comfort in being primal practitioners.
Rico Nasty never formally partook in primal therapy, but her mixtape Anger Management produced with Kenny Beats in 2019 drew heavy inspiration from Javon’s teachings. The art cover of the album itself mirrors a similar image that reappears on Janov’s book covers: a psychedelic of a man’s head with a screaming mouth bursting out of the top.
This album was Rico’s own version of adult therapy, complete with plenty of raw-throated screaming ad libs and overall being an outlet to release her anger. The mixtape used sounds from nu metal, E.D.M., and hard rock as it does from trap and rap.
And here is the debut first album: Nightmare Vacation. A wallop of loud and radical sounds. Mixes of raspy, smashing vocals and grungy hooks with cooler, early 2000s sounding fun computerised beats.
Tacobella showed up on tracks like “Pussy Poppin” and “Back & Forth”, sensual songs about female sexual empowerment.
Both her alter ego’s were prominent on this album: Trap Levigne and Tacobella
This album demonstrates her broad abilities and futuristic visions of music as she collabs with alternative 100 gec’s Dylan Brady, who produced the genre-infused tracks “OHFR?” and “iPhone”, tracks Trap Levigne rapped on. “Let it Out” continues with the Javon influence from Anger Management, screaming and “letting out”
“If you wanna rage, let it out-- LET IT OUT”
Rico is only 24 years old, and hasn’t even reached her peak yet. She has accomplished significantly more than so many artists her age. Her musical talent is beyond what we’ve seen before, and seeing her come up is outstanding as she greatly impacts music. Rico’s fearlessness to be herself is so inspiring for Black women who don’t fit into the boxes society expects us to. Her ability to embrace femininity and experiment with her music in unconventional ways is quite outstanding, and her career is only going up from here.
SOURCES
https://www.spin.com/featured/rico-nasty-has-landed/
Rico Nasty: “I definitely resonate with being a pop-punk princess”
https://www.thefader.com/2018/03/05/rico-nasty-poppin-smack-a-bitch-icarly-interview
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-raw-sounds-of-rico-nasty
https://www.highsnobiety.com/tag/rico-nasty/
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1032809568/rico-nasty-tiny-desk-home-concert
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