Rico Nasty Releases New Album 'Lethal'

Today, Rico Nasty has released her highly anticipated album LETHAL, out now via Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). Listen here.

On the release, Rico shares "It feels so good to be releasing LETHAL finally. I started working on this album well over a year ago and so much has changed for me since then. All things I'm proud of. I've been in singing lessons, voice therapy, acting lessons, dancing lessons, parent teacher conferences, on planes, on stages (though more to come there 😝) on set FILMING A TV SHOW… all in the midst of creating and releasing an album I'm really proud of. It's one that showcases all sides of myself, sides the fans may not have seen yet. And somehow it still feels like my most cohesive (and authentic) body of work to date. I hope you guys love it. I know I do 😍"

Always the rap world's biggest rock star, Rico Nasty is known for her own particular brand of rage-rap and for her outrageous on-stage, online, volume-up persona. But as she grew up, she started to feel trapped by the character she created. LETHAL is a reckoning of who Rico is at 27 with the trap-pop teen persona she created more than a decade ago. Executive produced by GRAMMY nominated producer Imad Royal, the album still features all the hallmarks of a Rico Nasty record - female rage, heavy guitars, humor - but there are also notes of femininity, introspection and a more complex framing of all the angles of Rico - the performer, the mother, the adult. Purchase the album HERE.

Alongside the new record, Rico will make her acting debut in Apple TV+ & A24's Margo's Got Money Troubles, created by David E. Kelley and based on the 2024 novel by Rufi Thorpe. Rico will star alongside Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfieffer, Nicole Kidman, Nick Offerman, Lindsey Normington & more.

The album is preceded by lead single "TEETHSUCKER (YEA3X)"- a headturning statement of intent that Billboard praised, writing "Rico Nasty has always felt a bit ahead of the times, and this could be the moment the mainstream finally syncs up with her." Rico followed the track with the sticky, hook-laced trap-pop of "ON THE LOW" and the more recent, playfully sophisticated combination of ​ "BUTTERFLY KISSES" & "CAN'T WIN EM ALL."


From the moment she arrived, Rico Nasty stood out. Since her breakthrough as a teenager from PG County, Maryland with her own signature blend of bubbly melodies, rage raps, and skull-rattling beats, the artist born Maria Kelly has been an iconoclastic presence in the rap game. She's been drawn from the jump to the juxtaposition of hard and soft, countering her sweet-and-sour Sugar Trap sound with the kind of vocal cord-shredding mosh-rap you hear everywhere today. Back then, label executives called her weird for songs like 2018's paradigm-shifting "Smack A Bitch," which kicked open the doors to a dominant new era of "rapper as rockstar." At a time when female rappers dressed like WWE wrestlers, Rico was serving Sex Pistols meets Rainbow Brite. But for Rico, the aesthetic wasn't a costume or a phase. It's one thing to dress like a rockstar " to be a rockstar is another.

Scan your favorite new rap playlist and you'll hear a generation of up-and-coming artists inspired by Rico's balance of high-femme trap-pop and nu-metal rage rap. But around the time of her last record, 2022's Las Ruinas, the innovator felt trapped: "I was caught in the space of wanting to be understood by the masses, but also recognizing that maybe I'm not supposed to be." She'd started to feel pigeonholed by her own outré persona, which hadn't changed much since she'd stepped into the role of Rico Nasty as a teen. "I felt like I was living in character," the 27-year old admits today. "And when I first started, that was the whole idea of it " but that gets exhausting." Backstage at last year's headlining tour, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror dressed as a teenage raver. "No shade, but dude, you're 26," she recalls thinking. "When are you going to grow up?"

So began Rico Nasty's year of reckoning, which began as a conscious free-fall. "I just completely let life take me: letting myself indulge in things that made me excited, living real life experiences," she says. She cleared her closet of the things that made her feel stuck at age 19, ditching the Demonia boots for grown-and-sexy heels. She dove deep into books, deleted social media from her phone, and started taking therapy seriously. For years, she'd withstood label pressure to give her songs more pop appeal or hop on passing trends. Now, working on the songs that would become LETHAL, Rico felt like she had back in the Sugar Trap days, before she'd known how bittersweet the industry could be. In short, she says: "I reconnected to myself."

Meanwhile she'd parted ways with her entire management team, flying solo until an opportunity to perform with Paramore in summer 2023 introduced her to her new team. Rico had been signed to Atlantic Records since 2018, but dreamed of being "somewhere a little bit more edgy, where I had more space to grow and be whoever I felt like being." When her new team mentioned Fueled By Ramen, the alternative label who launched bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco into the mainstream, Rico panicked that she'd be misunderstood: "I'm a rapper, and I want to be remembered as a rapper." Instead, the label instructed Rico to stay true to no one but herself.

TRACKLIST:
01 WHO WANT IT
​02 TEETHSUCKER (YEA3x)
​03 ON THE LOW
​04 PINK
​05 BUTTERFLY KISSES
​06 EAT ME!
​07 SOUL SNATCHER
​08 GRAVE
​09 SON OF A GUN
​10 SMOKE BREAK
​11 CRASH
​12 CAN'T WIN EM ALL
​13 SAY WE DID
​14 YOU COULD NEVER
​15 SMILE