Rico Nasty: Nightmare Vacation | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Nightmare Vacation, the debut album from Rico Nasty is often aggressive and absurd and for those reasons, it’s her best work yet. Though it’s her first record proper after a string of mixtapes, the American rapper continues to embrace her eccentric spirit, in an eclectic array of sounds that defy traditional genre conventions and ultimately make her debut one of the most exciting of the year.

Though Nightmare Vacation feels spontaneous and contains Rico Nasty’s urgent rapping style, it never feels unpolished. The production across the record is agile and changes form as needed. In Don’t Mind Me, production from Buddah Bless is smooth, allowing features from Gucci Mane and Don Toliver to shine. On this track, Rico Nasty is flexible, holding back in order to escape outshining her features. At the other extreme, the production on Let It Out is a harrowing, metal-infused trap, which compliments Rico’s engulfing screams delightfully. She emerges from this thunderous production like a rap equivalent to Daughters or Chelsea Wolfe.

Every time Rico delves into darkness -and she’s a regular in the shadows- it always comes across lighthearted and empowering. So much is clear on OHFR? Here, an unsettling, whistling beat courtesy of 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady allows Rico to charge through rumours and self-doubt: “I do the same thing that you do, it’s just with me they feel it / Oh, you mad that you can’t hurt my pockets or my feelings?” Though she resolves to stay humble, “I been sinnin’ lately, but I’m still God fearing.”

Rico Nasty’s rapping across Nightmare Vacation is some of the most unique I’ve heard this year. Her lyrics contain multitudes - she often drops humorous references and provides hilarious commentary. She opens Loser with a knowing reference to Mean Girls, while she forms a solo barbershop quartet with her jangly adlibs. In Check Me Out, nearly every line of the chorus hits differently, she recalls Playboi Carti as she raps “Diamonds in my mouth,” as if it’s not clear enough, she adds “like food!” But it’s ultimately the fluidity of her vocals that make Nightmare Vacation so compelling. Rico Nasty doesn’t sound the same in any two songs, and though that may be a valid criticism of other rappers, it’s what ties the spontaneous, spitball elements of the record together.

Rico Nasty raps, she slurs her words together, screams, and enunciates differently, line by line. In IPHONE, stylised in a Twitter rant heavy caps lock, even the pandemic can’t get Rico down. Her vocals are entirely modified, finding an eccentric beauty among oppressive trap production by Brady. When she screams “Woah!” in the track’s outro, it’s impossible to wipe the grin from your face. If there’s any downside to the record, it’s that Rico Nasty is so charismatic, when she has to pull back and share her stage with her features -most of whom are male rappers that are pale and monotone in comparison- there’s an immediately noticeable void.

As Rico Nasty transitions between hardcore rap, bubblegum pop and trap, from her wild vocal delivery, irresistible and hilarious lyrics, and boundary-pushing production, this record beats the rap crowd at their game without ever surrendering the oddity that made her interesting in the first place. Nightmare Vacation is Rico Nasty’s most compelling release yet.

- Sean Tayler.
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