Rico Nasty - Nightmare Vacation

The Guardian 60

(Atlantic)
The high-volume delivery may be an acquired taste but there are gems to be found in this album of chaotic experimentalism

Rico Nasty has never played nice: as her moniker suggests, she’s aggressive, in your face, and refuses to back down. Having amassed a strong cult following through multiple mixtapes, the 23-year-old rapper’s debut album doubles down on her raspy, crushing sound.

The Guardian 0

(Atlantic)
The 23-year-old Marylander delivers the aggro punk-rap party of a lifetime

If 2020 is our nightmare vacation from normal life, then Maryland 23-year-old Rico Nasty is an entertainingly misfit holiday rep. On her debut album, after a string of mixtapes under various alter egos, the rapper (real name Maria-Cecilia Simone Kelly) delivers track after track of pummelling catharsis – an aggro punk-rap party to pop the lid on an airless 12 months.

Nasty emerged in the emo-showered SoundCloud rap era (she nods to that with rapper Trippie Red on the track Loser), but builds on the rap-metal intensity of her 2019 release Anger Management, screeching and invoking moshpits (STFU) like the Joker by way of Joan Jett. There are songs, too, that pinpoint hyperpop (iPhone; OHFR?), this year’s buzzy, catch-all term for candied pixelations of J-pop, EDM, hip-hop, rock and chipmunk vocals that is aesthetically rooted in the 00s (and is either the coolest thing to happen on TikTok or is like what Hudson Mohawke was making 10 years ago).