Remember “Smack a Bitch,” the rap-rock stomper in which Rico Nasty thanked God that she didn’t have to slap the shit out of someone? When it dropped in 2018, it was a rallying cry for rap-rooted, emo-curious young people: an eclectic subset that bootlegged pop-punk songs, looked up to Lil Peep, maybe fucked with Paramore. This month, some of those angsty teenagers graduated from college; Thrasher beanies and discarded vape pens gather dust on their closet floors. This doesn’t make their past selves any less authentic—they’ve just grown up. Rico, too. Years ago, as a DMV upstart, she funnelled her influences—punk rock, swag-era pop, regional rap—into a glammed-up character that bordered on cartoonish. She wore her hair in spikes, favored platform boots, and created alter egos. Nearly a decade later, none of them fit anymore.
This is the premise of LETHAL, the most wrathful and freewheeling Rico Nasty album to date. Released via pop-punk label Fueled by Ramen, the record attempts to ditch old constraints—costumes, identities, categories—in favor of unfiltered feelings. Those computer-generated guitars from “Smack a Bitch”? They’re live now. Sometimes the drums, too. Oh, and there’s a death metal song. “I’ve already been looked at as the big, angry, screaming bitch anyway,” she said in a recent interview. “So why the fuck would I care?” Somewhere in these 15 songs is the most hell-raising, heavyweight Rico Nasty album in years. But as much as LETHAL seeks to do away with costume-play, the scattered cross-genre patchwork effectively makes competing caricatures of its influences—no longer melding rock with rap, but slipping in and out of them like changes of clothes. Tacobella and Trap Lavigne are not only still alive, they’re competing for space.
This tug-of-war makes for a disjointed listen, which sucks, because there are so many glimpses of the cutthroat album that could have been. In the first three tracks, Rico darts between redundant rage (“Who Want It”), arena-rock pastiche that would crush in a Nerf commercial (“Teethsucker (Yea3x)”), and one of the most affecting love songs in her catalog (“On the Low”). It’s the real thing: not the unfuckwithable Tacobella, nor the punk princess Trap Lavigne, but a yearning Rico Nasty setting aside braggadocio to promise that she won’t kiss and tell. The simmering “Eat Me!” attempts to subvert hypermasculine rage, turning feminine agency into authority. (Compare “He wanna fuck on a MILF, callin’ me mama” to “I’m fuckin’ on a MILF, yeah, ayy, this bitch like 30.”) The production is too monotonous to be convincing, and this leaves Rico on an island. Then there’s a sudden transition, and she’s shit-talking over a sputtering new beat that finally matches her energy. It’s vintage Rico Nasty, the bratty flexer that slid all over Nasty in 2018. But it’s hard to appreciate, because it’s only half of the song.
LETHAL is, in spirit, a passion project: Rico Nasty sounds like she’s having a blast. Yet certain moments seem dropped in, as if to meet a rebellion quota. Midway through “Grave,” she raps, “Rocking shit like I rip on a guitar,” and—surprise!—a heavy guitar lick appears, like someone pressed a Hard rock sound effects button. The buzzsaw riffage of “Smoke Break” is a beautiful match for Rico’s raspy timbre, but the song is undermined by anti-everything clichés like “Break shit always” and “Burn this shit down”: rock music as anarchy ASMR. It’s too bad, because the album has highlights if you know where to look: “Can’t Win Em All” lobs a mellow alt-rock ballad over wonderfully shifty percussion; the foot-tappy “Crash” is disarmingly desperate, proof that Rico is more than just punchlines and persona. More often, the Rico Nasty of LETHAL feels like she’s playing herself in a biopic: performing the most extreme version of a character she set out to deconstruct.
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