Her name is Rico Nasty; her breakthrough hit was called “Smack a Bitch.” It was only a matter of time before the rapper born Maria Kelly got in the circle pit with last year’s Lethal, an amalgam of rage-rap, punk rock, and the “sugar trap” she’s been honing for almost a decade.

Of course, she didn’t need guitars to put mixtapes called Nasty and Anger Management on the map in the first place – just rapid-fire verses and unruly beats for simple, blunt head-knocker shit. (But she does sound good with a band on her Tiny Desk concert.)

On the fiery new RX, Lethal’s quick-and-dirty follow-up, she and Anger Management producer Kenneth Blume (formerly Kenny Beats) didn’t overthink. She just went with her gut and her own label and what she knows best — rapping her ass off — before embarking on another leg of touring with Hayley Williams, who’s been seen joining Rico onstage for “Smack a Bitch.” She’s also gearing up for another season of the multiple-Emmy-nominated Margo’s Got Money Troubles, on which she plays an OnlyFans creator with the perfect alias WangMangler.

Not only does Rico want the universe to know she can do it all, she also wants to correct the record about her troubled stint touring with Playboi Carti just as he himself was becoming a dominant force in the genre. The message is that she’s always been able to do it all, from “playing Grudge” developing her shriek to “the no-talking game” she had to play for a week just to recover her voicebox. She spoke to me via phone about doing all this and popping by the “Old Town Road” video shoot for the hell of it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Daniel @ TND: What made you decide to put out RX on Sugar Trap instead of Fueled by Ramen again?

Rico Nasty: Oh, because I’m not with them anymore. I’m not with anybody, I’m by myself. Nah nah nah nah nah. [Taunting laugh.] I just needed a platform. I’m fully independent, I do whatever I want. And that feels like a beautiful thing to say. I feel like I earned it. Shoutout to Fueled by Ramen, shoutout to everybody that helped make this shit possible, man. Thank god, I ain’t have to smack a bitch today.

I know this was more on Lethal but I wanted to ask you what was different about trying to write rock songs like “Smoke Break” or singing melodies for the first time. Did you ever write songs like that before you became a rapper?

I actually did. I actually used to make songs like that in my first batches of songs. And even on Sugar Trap 2, you can hear there’s a song on there called “Phone,” and the sample to that song is some indie-ass shit. So I always liked it, but I always felt like I was a rapper first, and I just never really thought that I was vocally capable of certain things. But in finding your way and finding your voice, that’s what makes things beautiful. Your voice is, like, one of a kind. So I really stopped thinking about that and stopped thinking about how I was perceived. I’ve always been a fan of making music that I like. I don't really care if people think it makes sense or whatever. And I know sometimes I can go left-field, but I think that's the fun. You gotta have fun. We gotta go left-field. We gotta do our own thing. It’s okay to do your own thing. But I think with this project, it's also okay to show n****s why I can afford to do my own thing. Fuck, I can afford to do my own thing because I’m extremely good at what I do, and that's just what it is.

I’m always interested in what punk and hardcore singers do to preserve their growl, and you’re the rare rapper I can also ask about it. Did you have to get any kind of training to learn to scream or anything? How do you preserve your voice?

Yeah. Shoutout to my man, Dougie. Shoutout to Doug. He’s my vocal person. I definitely have a lot of rituals in terms of my vocals. I like to play Grudge, it’s my favorite thing to do. Basically, you know the movie. You know the sound. You just practice that until you can go as high as you can into a scream. And then I played the no-talking game, which is, like, after the show, shut the fuck up. Everybody be quiet. Because I can’t talk. Your voice is the most fragile. After you get offstage, you just screamed for pretty much hours, so you gotta be quiet. And gum. I like gum before I go on stage. Sometimes I either fucking swallow it or spit this shit out. I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes I do swallow my gum, though. It makes your throat really mucousy and lubricated. I like these Gin-Gins. You get them from fucking…what is that shit, Trader Joe’s? [Laughs.] They’re these little ginger treats. And a nebulizer. Those are my rituals. Before a show, I might sub out a blunt for a nebulizer, just use my little thing for my throat so that it’s lubricated again. I think that the biggest thing is just making sure your voice isn't dry. Because that’s it. And a lot of Throat Coat. Nothing too crazy.

Have you ever had an experience on tour where you blew out your voice?

Oh, you wanna know something sick?

Of course.

Okay. So there was, like, six months where I had got off of…fuck, what tour is that? The Monster Energy tour or some shit that I did. I think it was, like, 2024. I got off tour, and my voice was permanently hoarse. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on? I’m getting back into sessions, I can’t do things the way I used to, my voice is giving out hella quick. what the hell is going on?’ I go to the ENT, and I had a thing on my fucking vocal cords. If I didn’t shut up and if I literally didn't shut my mouth, I was gonna have to get surgery. 

Oh, wow.

So I basically had to be quiet for a week, which was extremely hard at first, but wound up being super peaceful. And actually, it's funny, my assistant had to do the same thing. Because I guess from us talking over the music and screaming after the shows, having fun and shit, it like, fucked our voices up. So she had to do it too. But, yeah, we had to take a vow of silence for seven to nine days. And I just couldn't eat anything acidic, I had to just be very mindful of my acid reflux. It was a whole fucking journey. It was actually insane because I didn't know that that's a thing that could happen. I had no idea. I was, like, what the fuck? But Miley Cyrus went through it, there’s a lot of people that go through it. It’s actually quite normal, but not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. I was never professionally trained to do what I do. I never took vocal lessons, I never took singing lessons. I never took myself serious as a vocalist, period. And then I realized after that tour, 'whoa, this is an instrument. This is a muscle.' I had to fucking lock in, man. [Laughs.] I had to lock in.

You’re about to tour with Hayley Williams, one of your heroes. Have you ever talked about collaborating on music?

Actually, we got some shit in the works, but I don’t really wanna speak too much about it because I like for people to see things when they happen. But she’s fucking amazing. She’s awesome. I think there’s a lot you guys have to look forward to.

After your terrible experience dealing with shitty Playboi Carti fans, what sort of process went into finding the right collaborators and audiences to improve touring conditions for you?

I don’t even think that’s, like, a real fucking thing. The Carti shit was, like, two bad shows. It wasn’t the worst shit ever. I think looking back on it, it was a great experience. It’s pretty punk rock. Carti wound up being one of the biggest artists of our generation, and I’m one of the only girls to tour with bro. So I can’t continue to shit on the experience. I’m very proud of myself that I stood out and stood on my own. And I don’t really look towards anything when touring as long as the fucking money right, you know? I don't really count anybody out. I think I’ve been counted out even in terms of features or whatever. I feel like ever since that shit happened, like, what features? I don't do no features. [Laughs.]

I don’t work with no men. The men don’t ask to work with me, so I don't. Of course, I think there’s rappers that’s hard as fuck. But I think that shit overall divided me and made people feel like they had to pick a side and they didn’t. It’s not that fucking serious. People put so much on the tour experience; they didn’t put enough on what I was going through in real life, and that's fine, I don't expect them to. But, again, I wish that people would stop thinking that it was so bad for me. It wasn’t really that bad. Like, I’ve low-key been in worse situations. [Laughs.]

Speaking of features, what was your experience like when you cameoed in the “Old Town Road” video? That was a huge generational event.

Shoutout to Lil Nas. He’s literally the sweetest person ever. Low-key…actually, high-key, he’s really the sweetest soul that I’ve gotten to meet in this industry. But, that shit was crazy. I mean, it was huge. It was monumental. That was a cool time for me being a part of that, and I was in the “Hot Girl Summer” video. That was a good summer for me. That was fun, it was exciting. He had big-ass horses on set and shit. That was probably the biggest music video budget I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was probably the biggest song I’ve ever seen in my life.

Yeah, I’m quite sure.

I know you said you didn’t take singing lessons or anything like that before, but did you do any acting lessons for your role as WangMangler on [the show] Margo's Got Money Troubles?

For that, yeah, I had to take acting classes. I don't wanna say it like that. Let me rephrase it. Not had to take. I thought it would be good to take some, so I went and got some help. And it definitely paid off for sure. I feel like acting is a whole lot different from music. You have to, like, remember things. You have to stay in character. It feels more like a music video than anything, but higher stakes. There’s literal words and not a song. So it’s one of those things where you get the hang of it after a little while, but, yeah, that shit was fun. See you guys for season two. That’ll be crazy.