Rico Nasty - NPR Tiny Desk Concert Out Today ahead of Fall Tour
RICO NASTY
WATCH NPR TINY DESK PERFORMANCE HERE
FALL NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR KICKS OFF IN SEPTEMBER
NEW ALBUM LETHAL OUT NOW ON FUELED BY RAMEN
Today, Rico Nasty’s NPR Tiny Desk is live in support of her new album LETHAL, out now via Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). This is Rico’s first in-studio performance since her debut at-home concert back in 2021. Watch a taste of what’s to come from her album live HERE as she will embark on a fall tour kicking off on September 19th at Chicago’s Riot Fest and ends Nov 4th in Los Angeles at The Fonda. Tickets are on-sale HERE.
Always the rap world’s biggest rock star, Rico Nasty is known for her own particular brand of rage-rap and for her outrageous on-stage, online, volume-up persona. But as she grew up, she started to feel trapped by the character she created. LETHAL is a reckoning of who Rico is at 27 with the trap-pop teen persona she created more than a decade ago. Executive produced by GRAMMY nominated producer Imad Royal, the album still features all the hallmarks of a Rico Nasty record - female rage, heavy guitars, humor - but there are also notes of femininity, introspection and a more complex framing of all the angles of Rico - the performer, the mother, the adult.
Alongside the new record, Rico will make her acting debut in Apple TV+ & A24’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, created by David E. Kelley and based on the 2024 novel by Rufi Thorpe. Rico will star alongside Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfieffer, Nicole Kidman, Nick Offerman, Lindsey Normington & more.
Tour Dates
Sept 19th - Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
Sept 21st - San Francisco, CA @ Portola
Sept 23rd - Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
Sept 24th - Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
Sept 26th - Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex - Rockwell
Sept 28th - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
Oct 2nd - Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom
Oct 3rd - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Oct 5th - Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
Oct 7th - Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
Oct 8th - Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues - Cleveland
Oct 10th - Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
Oct 11th - Baltimore, MD @ Nevermore Hall
Oct 12th - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Oct 14th - Boston, MA @ House of Blues - Boston
Oct 15th - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Oct 18th - Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore - Silver Spring
Oct 19th - Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
Oct 21st - Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Oct 22nd - Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
Oct 24th - Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution
Oct 25th - Orlando, FL @ The Beacham
Oct 27th - Houston, TX @ House of Blues Houston
Oct 28th - Dallas, TX @ The Bomb Factory
Oct 29th - Austin, TX @ Empire Garage
Nov 2nd - Pomona, CA @ The Glass House
Nov 4th - Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
The album is preceded by lead single “TEETHSUCKER (YEA3X)”- a headturning statement of intent that Billboard praised, writing “Rico Nasty has always felt a bit ahead of the times, and this could be the moment the mainstream finally syncs up with her.” Rico followed the track with the sticky, hook-laced trap-pop of “ON THE LOW” and the more recent, playfully sophisticated combination of “BUTTERFLY KISSES” & “CAN’T WIN EM ALL.”
WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEOS FOR
“TEETHSUCKER (YEA3X),” “ON THE LOW,” “BUTTERFLY KISSES x CAN’T WIN EM ALL,” “CRASH”& “SON OF A GUN”
From the moment she arrived, Rico Nasty stood out. Since her breakthrough as a teenager from PG County, Maryland with her own signature blend of bubbly melodies, rage raps, and skull-rattling beats, the artist born Maria Kelly has been an iconoclastic presence in the rap game. She’s been drawn from the jump to the juxtaposition of hard and soft, countering her sweet-and-sour Sugar Trap sound with the kind of vocal cord-shredding mosh-rap you hear everywhere today. Back then, label executives called her weird for songs like 2018’s paradigm-shifting “Smack A Bitch,” which kicked open the doors to a dominant new era of “rapper as rockstar.” At a time when female rappers dressed like WWE wrestlers, Rico was serving Sex Pistols meets Rainbow Brite. But for Rico, the aesthetic wasn’t a costume or a phase. It’s one thing to dress like a rockstar — to be a rockstar is another.
Scan your favorite new rap playlist and you’ll hear a generation of up-and-coming artists inspired by Rico’s balance of high-femme trap-pop and nu-metal rage rap. But around the time of her last record, 2022’s Las Ruinas, the innovator felt trapped: “I was caught in the space of wanting to be understood by the masses, but also recognizing that maybe I’m not supposed to be.” She’d started to feel pigeonholed by her own outré persona, which hadn’t changed much since she’d stepped into the role of Rico Nasty as a teen. “I felt like I was living in character,” the 27-year old admits today. “And when I first started, that was the whole idea of it — but that gets exhausting.” Backstage at last year’s headlining tour, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror dressed as a teenage raver. “No shade, but dude, you’re 26,” she recalls thinking. “When are you going to grow up?”
So began Rico Nasty’s year of reckoning, which began as a conscious free-fall. “I just completely let life take me: letting myself indulge in things that made me excited, living real life experiences,” she says. She cleared her closet of the things that made her feel stuck at age 19, ditching the Demonia boots for grown-and-sexy heels. She dove deep into books, deleted social media from her phone, and started taking therapy seriously. For years, she’d withstood label pressure to give her songs more pop appeal or hop on passing trends. Now, working on the songs that would become LETHAL, Rico felt like she had back in the Sugar Trap days, before she’d known how bittersweet the industry could be. In short, she says: “I reconnected to myself.”
Meanwhile she’d parted ways with her entire management team, flying solo until an opportunity to perform with Paramore in summer 2023 introduced her to her new team. Rico had been signed to Atlantic Records since 2018, but dreamed of being “somewhere a little bit more edgy, where I had more space to grow and be whoever I felt like being.” When her new team mentioned Fueled By Ramen, the alternative label who launched bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco into the mainstream, Rico panicked that she’d be misunderstood: “I’m a rapper, and I want to be remembered as a rapper.” Instead, the label instructed Rico to stay true to no one but herself.
TRACKLIST:
01 WHO WANT IT
03 ON THE LOW
04 PINK
06 EAT ME!
07 SOUL SNATCHER
08 GRAVE
09 SON OF A GUN
10 SMOKE BREAK
11 CRASH
13 SAY WE DID
14 YOU COULD NEVER
15 SMILE
More About Rico Nasty LETHAL
By Brittany Spanos
LETHAL is Rico Nasty’s third studio album following her debut album, Nightmare Vacation and her 2022 follow-up to Las Ruinas. She began writing songs as a teenager in Washington D.C., quickly becoming a YouTube and Soundcloud star. In addition to her three full length albums, she’s released two EP’s and seven mix-tapes along with countless singles and collaborations with a veritable “whose who” of music stars including Doechii, Megan Thee Stallion, Denzel Curry, Schoolboy Q, ASAP Ferg, Lil Yachty, Gucci Mane, Kali Uchis, Don Toliver, Dylan Brady, Kenny Beats, Flo Milli, 100 Gecs and more. Rico Nasty was named as part of the 2018 XXL Freshman Class and skyrocketed to fame with her breakout hit “Smack A Bitch.” Since then she’s appeared on numerous film and television soundtracks and in multiple brand campaigns along with appearances on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Tiny Desk and more.
LETHAL, Rico’s third studio album and her first for Fueled By Ramen, arrives this May as the grown-up evolution of the “sugar trap” sound. But where her early work was girly, the 15-track LETHAL is all woman, presenting her signature hard/soft duality at its sexiest, coolest, and most confident. Executive produced by Imad Royal, the Grammy-nominated producer known for his work with The Chainsmokers and Panic! at the Disco, the album balances playfully sophisticated songs that draw from the divine feminine (“Pink,” “Butterfly Kisses”) with tracks like “Teethsucker” and “Soul Snatcher” that channel monster truck show energy and establish Rico as a true originator of the rap-rock revival. “I’m putting my flag on the moon: This is my shit. This is what I do,” she says with pride. “It’s not an act. It’s not a phase. It’s not something I’m doing to promote my album. This been the vibe.”
Gone are the days when being Rico Nasty felt like playing a character. With LETHAL, Rico’s embodying main character energy instead. “This album is about being confident and saying fuck everybody else,” she says. “It’s about getting doors slammed in your face and people telling you to try it their way again and again, and you stay true to yourself and it works. That’s what this project is. It’s an ode to yourself.”
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