It was Rico Nasty and Kenny Beats’ first time in the studio together. She asked him for heavy metal. Then she stepped out, took some molly, and came back in. He apparently hadn’t finished the beat yet, but Rico saw something in its half-baked state and insisted on recording. She might’ve been motivated by some rap beef, maybe not. Rico’s hook was simple yet deadly. Kind of like that time Ice Cube rhymed “AK” with “good day,” there was a sense of foreboding in its relief: “Thank God, I ain’t have to smack a bitch today.”
The 2018 loosie “Smack a Bitch” laid the foundation for the Maryland rapper’s electrifying screamo rap—jagged guitar riffs, booming trap drums, and an unbridled rage that pushes Rico's vocal cords to the brink, hoarseness be damned. The song reappears with a deliriously chaotic remix on Rico’s official debut album, Nightmare Vacation, recalling the genesis of her punk-rap hybrid sound. The menacing rasp was simmering under the surface on standouts like “Key Lime OG” and “Poppin” from her 2017 mixtape Sugar Trap 2, but it wasn’t until 2018’s Nasty and 2019’s Anger Management that it took shape.
Rico has talked of pop ambitions—one of her biggest inspirations is Rihanna—and like the Bajan icon, she finds multiple pit stops between the sweetness and fury of her various personas. In addition to Kenny Beats on “Smack a Bitch,” Rico enlists 16 other producers across 16 tracks, including Dylan Brady from 100 gecs and Take a Daytrip, hitmakers for Sheck Wes and Lil Nas X. There are more than a few moments of brilliance, but as a whole, the album lacks cohesion, feeling less exploratory and unbound than simply unfocused.
Where Nasty brought Rico’s hard edges into sharper focus, Nightmare Vacation reshapes them, experimenting with cadence and tone in playful and exciting ways. Rico has mastered aggression but shirks formulas and predictability, stretching out the spectrum of anger and blending it with humor, bravado, and brattiness. The sparse keys and impish vocal contortions of “Check Me Out” recall the dexterity of OG Maco’s flow on the Vine staple “U Guessed It.” On the track, her equally strained and cheerful delivery of “you snooze you lose” is both hilarious and frightening, a polarizing combo that Rico somehow makes work. On the more extreme end, the grinding guitar loop and feverish overdubs of “Let It Out” are expertly engineered to remedy the pent-up frustration and anxiety that have come to characterize not just this calendar year, but every single one before it.