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).
The result is an invigorating if disorientating listen, as Nasty hurtles from a seductive trap tête-à-tête with Aminé (Back and Forth) into songs resembling Korn (Girl Scouts, Let It Out). To some this will sound like a gimmick; to others it’s the future. Either way, it’s refreshing to hear the once-maligned nu-metal genre revitalised: Nasty’s 2018 breakthrough Smack a Bitch, remixed here, comes off like a riposte to the misogynist bands of that era. Her music is heavier and more raging than them all.
