“This isn’t a rebirth. It’s training for your f*cking life”: Inside Rico Nasty’s bold new era

On the surface, the new album by Rico Nasty seems just as in-your-face and aggressive as anything the Maryland-born rapper has ever made. LETHAL starts off with two incredibly confrontational songs – WHO WANT IT and TEETHSUCKER (YEA3x) – that showcase the raw and savage energy that’s defined the 28-year-old’s music since she began making it in high school. Yet while there is plenty of that energy flowing through its veins, it also feels like there’s a new dimension of the artist born Maria-Cecilia Simone Kelly beginning to break through from the safety of her onstage persona.

“What does it mean to me?” she asks herself, repeating the question that Kerrang! has just asked about the album. There’s a slight pause as she thinks about her answer, her words speeding up as she finds her footing – and then meaning.

“I don’t know. It kind of just means, like… liberation a little bit, and breaking free of the box that I somewhat put myself in. It's just getting back to who I am and the things that I enjoy – walking my shit and being confident and not really caring about the outcome of that cockiness.”

Rico readily admits that flurry of her early successes – mainly the breakthrough of singles Poppin’, Smack A Bitch and Key Lime OG in 2018 – caught up with her over the years that followed, especially after she was picked up by major label Atlantic, who released her first two full-lengths, Nightmare Vacation and Las Ruinas, in 2020 and 2022 respectively. Asked if that whirlwind had made her feel like she was losing who she was a little bit, the reply comes without a second thought.

“Yeah,” she begins, her voice sounding as much like an admission to herself as a response to the question. “And I feel like it's okay to say that, because it's not like I was the age that I am now saying, ‘I'm losing myself.’ I was a baby – like 23, 24. I feel like anybody would lose themselves when they're given everything in excess. There's so much love and hate and travelling and exhaustion, so many new people and new moving pieces, and you don't really know what the hell is going on.”

There’s a brief pause.

“Yeah,” she reiterates, the word now like a sad sigh. “I feel like it changes you, but I feel that's part of everybody's life, whether they're in the industry that I work in or just a regular fucking person – you kind of go through that phase where you're like, 'Wait a minute, if I keep this up, this shit's going to go down the dark path.’”

Thankfully, Rico’s intelligence, self-awareness and creativity meant she was able to avoid that dark path. Cognisant of the potential problems that lay ahead, she set out to make a record that would counteract them, serve as an antidote to that dark path. What that meant, first of all, was re-establishing her relationship with herself, as well as reassessing what she was making. There is, noticeably, slightly less of a punk and metal influence on these songs, but their attitude is actually more punk than anything she’s made previously. She’s more herself than ever before, which is about as punk as it gets.

“Making this record helped me fall in love with myself all over again,” she says. “I think I fell out of love with myself because I wasn't really putting anything into myself. Does that make sense? Like, I wasn't nourishing myself, I wasn't taking time to relax, taking time to have hobbies and just not burn myself out. And that created a lot of resentment. I was a workaholic. I didn't really do anything outside of work – and I think that that's where you start to fall out of love with yourself, because you don't know yourself. You become like a stranger, almost.”

It's that raw vulnerability – and Rico’s willingness to indulge it – that drives the 15 tracks on LETHAL. Because through that vulnerability she found (or, perhaps, re-found) the strength and self-assurance that had gone AWOL. By letting her guard down and writing these songs, she was able to really explore her identity – not just as Rico Nasty or her softer, gentler alter-ego Taco Bella – but also as her herself, as Maria-Cecilia. And the trick to being so open was simple…

“I just stopped being scared, bro,” she shrugs. “That's all it was. I was scared of people saying, 'How does she think that she's worth that? How does she think that she's that cool? How does think that she's that influential?' It was eliminating that, and just knowing what I know, feeling what I feel, and not cutting any corners to spare people's feelings.”

One major factor that plays into Rico's newfound freedom and laissez faire attitude toward other people's perceptions is that she recently got out of an eight-year relationship, which she felt had been holding her back when it came to making music

“A lot of my sessions were with that person in the fucking room,” she admits, “so what am I going to do? Talk shit about them in the room? Like, what the fuck?”

She lets out a big laugh, and with it comes a palpable sense of relief.

“It was crazy,” Rico continues, “because I would make songs before and they’d be vague and cutting around what's really happening. But for this album, there wasn't that blockage. I just talked about the shit that bothered me, and even went further than just the relationship. Like, I've still got issues I can't fix with my mom. I speak to a lot of kids who are like, 'Oh, my mom just doesn't get it.' And I'm like 'My mom still don't get it.' But that's my mom and I love my mom, and she don't mean no harm. But they never get it. How could you get it? It's so unorthodox. It's such a one-in-a-million, once-in-a-lifetime type of lifestyle. They don't get it, and that's okay. You can't win them all. You can't win everybody over. You can't make everybody believe in you.”

Of course, Rico herself is also a mother. It’s a well-known part of her history that, when she was 18 and still in high school, she gave birth to her son, Cameron. Sadly, Cameron’s father never know him, as he tragically passed away from an asthma attack before his son was born. Cameron is going to be 10 this year, and has always been a salient part of her life. In her 2022 Kerrang! Cover Story, the musician explained how “my story is my son”. That remains the case today. LETHAL ends with what is surely the most tender and beautiful song Rico has ever recorded, an almost-acoustic, almost-lullaby called SMILE that’s dedicated to Cameron, and conveys the unconditional and intense nature of Rico’s love for him.

“I guess it’s like our decade song,” says Rico sweetly. “He's so much like me. He loves himself (laughs). But even in the song I still took a cocky approach similar to all the other records. I'm like, 'Your eyes are like mine' because my eyes are beautiful! But I instil this into him every day: you're cool, you're beautiful, you're smart, you're funny, you are awesome, live your life, dude. And have fun, ’cause you're not going to get this time back!’”

It's a sweetly poignant (and unexpected) way to end LETHAL, and it all comes down to that vulnerability and unadulterated honesty that Rico has injected into these songs. It’s very unlikely she would or even could have written this song before now, but with LETHAL, she’s torn down the walls between herself and the listener, as well as between herself as a person and as an artist. Though it’s not, she insists, a complete reinvention, it certainly marks another phase in her life and career, and an important one at that.

“Rebirth is obviously a commonly-used term,” she says, “but this isn’t that. It's not a rebirth. It's more like a fine-tuning. It is more like a diet – going in and cutting the fat, bulking, and just training for your fucking life. I kept fighting back and forth with myself, and I realised like, 'You can control the narrative. You can be yourself. Just stop being so fucking scared. Like, what are you scared of? You actually went from being the scary bitch – the bitch everybody's scared of – to the bitch that's scared.’

“Having that conversation with myself, I realised, ‘You can blame it on other people, but the only person holding you back is yourself, dude.’”

LETHAL is out now via Atlantic.

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