As Rico Nasty logs onto Zoom to speak with Variety about her fierce yet emotional album, “Lethal,” which dropped today, she’s in the middle of quite the busy week.
For the past three days, the rap artist has been on set in L.A. for the new series “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” with Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman. And in her spare moments of downtime, she’s been gearing up for the release of “Lethal.”
“I feel like I’m living a double life. A triple life, I guess. But I’ve just been keeping myself busy so that I don’t get so caught up in the anxiety of dropping the project and focusing on that too much because I don’t want to get stagnant,” she says. “I’m just riding out the wave.”
“Lethal,” Rico’s first album under the label Fueled by Ramen, comes at a major transition period in her life as she moves away from her old creative team and finds a new sound. Right now, feeling grounded is all about “realizing how cool I really am.”
Which is exactly what the album is about. “A lot of the push and confidence for this album kind of came from within. I’ve always been surrounded by love, but I don’t think I could feel it,” she says. “It takes you loving yourself to be like, ‘Oh shit! I see why everybody loves me so much.’ I need to wake up, I need to do better. I need to be better.”
Below, Rico discusses opening up her rock and rap sounds to embrace more vulnerable beats, how she sees herself doing “everything” in life after scoring an acting role in “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” and why she thinks only real fans need to listen to the back half of “Lethal.”
You’ve been pretty candid in previous interviews about moving away from your old creative team. Why was Fueled by Ramen the right choice for this album?
On the production side, I had been asking for so many things that my other teams weren’t able to fulfill. I wanted live instruments and it was a certain thing that I was looking for — not even necessarily in the sound, but just the relationships with people. It was just not the vibes. It was good music, it just wasn’t where I wanted to go. I feel like every artist kind of gets to a point where everybody’s telling me who the fuck I need to be or who they see me being. Like, who do I want to be? Who do I see myself as?
This album, in many ways, has this push and pull relationship between letting your emotions out through the rock elements, but then also being reflective and somber. That conflict feels especially true in the transition between “Smoke Break” and “Crash.”
I took a look at things that I like to listen to, and I hadn’t done that since my earlier days with “Sugar Trap 2.” I was like, I want to make rock music, but I don’t want to necessarily do the rock they know me as. “Smoke Break” is an amazing song but I switched it up afterward. As an artist, I felt like: “Here. Here y’all go.” Y’all always knew I could do that and always asked for it, and here it is. I gave it to you.
On the other side, after I got all the anger out, this is how I’m really feeling. After Rico Nasty subsides, this is how Maria feels. There’s records like “Can’t Win Em All” and “You Could Never” where I’m just talking about shit and my fears and how people have treated me. Don’t even put this shit on if you have low self-esteem, you’re going to feel triggered type-shit. You’re going to feel like a loser. I don’t want people to feel attacked, I want people to hear this shit and feel like: “I’m that bitch. I’m the coolest person alive.” Because that’s what my music was originally made for. It wasn’t made to be like, “Oh, I’m so hardcore and I scream so loud!”
I can imagine it’s as much a form of therapy for you as it is for your fans.
I also have to think about the shows, too. My fans go to get some shit off their chest so I should 50/50 that — I should get some shit off my chest, too. That second half of the album is for my fans. If you’re not a super fan, you don’t really need to hear those songs. They’re not for you.
What were some of the most exciting sounds for you to introduce or play with on this record?
I’m not gonna lie, a lot of the songs were made on an acoustic guitar at first. After playing a riff, they would build the beat up around it, so that was cool to see because I always go for the loudest shit ever. But in certain cases, we started off with very low, soft-toned music and livened it up as we got along the way. “Can’t Win Em All” is a perfect example with the ending part where it’s acoustic. A lot of songs are acoustic and the production just went crazy. It was weird hearing myself that raw vocally.
I work a lot on the computer, it’s rare that we have live instruments. They might pull something in every now and again. Now, it takes longer to make a song with instruments, like so much longer. But it just helped me be more vulnerable in the raps. With what I was writing, it felt like it needed to be intentional.
Is that something you hope to do more of on future records?
I don’t think I can go back now that I know how to do it and the hunger it gave me, even outside of rapping.
In the spirit of pushing yourself, is acting something that you’ve always felt destined to do? And how has the experience been on set for “Margo’s Got Money Troubles?”
It’s so weird because I’ve always said that it’s something I want to do. As a kid, my parents put me in acting and singing lessons for a couple of months. Not just me, but my parents at a young age were like: “You’re gonna be on somebody’s camera.” My name amongst the family is the drama queen. So it was only a matter of time type shit. But when people ask me if I saw myself doing it, the best way to put it is I see myself doing everything. I don’t want to sell myself short. And with the acting shit, what’s so crazy is that I had to audition just like everybody else. I had to go up against people and I had to study the lines, read the book and invest in the same way I invested in my music.
On set, I feel special. I don’t know. I got my little chair, it says my name on it. I got a trailer. I’m an actress! I don’t know, dude. Have you ever had something in your life where you’ll like: “What the fuck?” It probably won’t feel real until it comes out.
Looking back on your career, the music industry has drastically changed since you got your start making mixtapes. And you’re incredibly active on TikTok. What do you think of the way apps like TikTok have changed the industry pipeline?
I don’t really know. I feel like it can be a double-edged sword for some artists. Some artists aren’t the TikTok type. But one thing I do want to say to artists, I went through the whole phase of, “I’m not a TikTok type.” Because I don’t want my music to be here today, gone tomorrow, like a trending sound. I want my music to be consumed like a meal. I don’t want it to be a snack. Like, I’m sitting down, I’m listening to this, I’m enjoying it. It’s not something that’s plastered into my ears because I’ve seen it on 10 different videos, so it’s forcefully catchy. That’s the only thing about TikTok — it’s forcefully catchy. It’s shit you don’t want to get stuck in your head that’s getting stuck in your head.
With certain songs, I love that for them and for those artists. I always love when it happens accidentally for artists. It’s about it being a natural thing. Sometimes the label will get down your throat and they’re forcing you to do that shit and I’m like, “That’s lame as hell!” You did not sign me to do social media. This is insane, I’m not doing 10 TikTok videos in one fucking day. You can suck my dick, I don’t care! And I feel like artists should not care. Sometimes you’ll get me promoting my music on TikTok, sometimes you’ll just catch me doing random shit. You can’t force-feed people.
With ‘Lethal’ showing a more vulnerable side to Rico Nasty while also showing your never-ending confidence, how did that play into the look for the music videos?
I constantly battled with wanting to be sexy and not necessarily knowing how. I think “On The Low” is a really good blend of, “Fun, cut, sexy, I look good!” For “Can’t Win Em All,” I wanted to do something slower and more vulnerable-feeling. Working with the director, Devin Desouza, has been awesome because he doesn’t typically do music videos.
My videos never looked generic, but in this new era, I just didn’t want to do the orthodox shit that I’ve seen all my peers do. I love the female rap music videos that come out. They’re so hard and cool and creative, but I just want to be a little bit different. I’m a fan of their work and I study it and I feel like: “Okay. What’s not being shown?”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
