Shortly after releasing Anger Management, her collaborative release with ascendant producer Kenneth Blume (then known as Kenny Beats), Rico Nasty headed out on tour with the reigning king of rage, Playboi Carti. The noisy, chaotic sound of her 2019 release helped set the stage for Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, which brought rage to the mainstream and pushed rap at large toward more aggressive sounds in the 2020s. Despite her clear influence, Rico was mercilessly heckled by Carti fans during her performance at the Portland tour stop. When one attendee threw a bottle at her, she dove into the crowd and chased them down: She belonged on stage with the architects of rage and couldn’t be told otherwise. In the years since that tour, however, Rico has drifted away from her signature sound—confrontational rap that borrows from noise, metal, and punk—in favor of a series of genre experiments: balladry, radio-friendly hyperpop, actual rap-rock. With RX, she attempts to return to her comfort zone by retracing her steps: going back into the studio with Blume to produce another tight 20-minute release. It may not be her most original work, but it is the DMV rapper’s most focused and satisfying release in years.
Opening track “CDG Foams” sets a high bar. From the first shout of “Kenny!,” Rico comes charging out of the gate with a cascade of breathless punch-ins, her furious bars threatening to strangle Blume’s Lex Luger-like stomp. Her flexes are classically Rico Nasty: snotty, flippant, playful. “Frenzy” nods to rap’s current vanguard by approximating the blown-out “LV Sandals” beat; she even borrows fakemink’s flow on the chorus. Still, she finds ways to make the song her own (who else would pronounce “glitter wrist” like “glittoris”?), and “Runway” similarly features almost Wanye-level dirty limericks (“Rockstar pussy and it got a mohawk”). Rico has always tempered her hardest tracks with more effervescent ones, and here, songs like “Blow Your Nose” and “Kiss N Make Up” pair bubbly instrumentals with pop-punk vocal tones in a way that recalls vintage Lil Uzi Vert.
The further Rico and Blume stray from their winning formula (hard-ass rapping over hard-ass beats), the less effective these songs feel. Lead single “Cupcake” should prove bouncy enough to peel off a few Doja Cat fans, but its horny puns feel a bit simplistic (“My box heart-shaped, Nirvana/Like a virgin, Madonna”). “Butthead,” the only song not produced entirely by Blume, brings in another one of Nasty’s longtime collaborators, Dylan Brady, who employs layered synths to build a wall of cartoony dread before undercutting it with a flatulent trombone—weird, sure but we’ve seen this trick before. “Rituals” tries to split the difference between dubstep and jerk but sounds a bit dated; the Baauer-featuring “Cheat Code” from Anger Management was more fiery and convincing.
Your enjoyment of RX might ultimately hinge on your expectations. The album works best as a sort of a low-stakes sequel to Anger Management, even if it doesn’t quite match its predecessor’s intensity. (On the first half of Anger Management, it sounds like Rico is going to scream herself hoarse—she seems to have a bit more sympathy for her vocal cords here). Still, there’s a good variety to Blume’s instrumentals and the hardest-hitting beats suit Rico well. She can still impress by gliding over his drums like the Road Runner: quick, elastic, and unbothered. The question then isn’t whether these two make a good pair but if they can still lead the way for a new generation of aggro rappers. Where Anger Management pushed rap vocals into the red and unapologetically swiped the “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” beat, RX retreads old formulas and chases current trends. Even as it revisits Rico’s glory days, RX suggests that maybe mellowing out with age is inevitable—after all, you can’t stay angry forever.
