Rico Nasty released a new mixtape, harkening a shift from her usual sound. The results are… nasty… in a bad way.
Rico Nasty is an artist I really enjoy. She brings an aggressive energy to rap combined with a good ear for beats. I wouldn’t call her a wordsmith or anything, but I usually enjoy the things she says. She’s often blunt, vulgar and… well…
Nasty.
Her last album Nightmare Vacation did a good job combining the two sides of her persona: her aggressive and mean side alongside her poppy and sensual side. I’d call it one of the best albums of 2020 and certainly her best work to date.
I was really excited for what she had coming up the pike. A solid verse on Jasiah’s track Art of War alongside Denzel Curry kept the excitement up until her first single from her next project dropped. The single was called Vaderz.
…I was not impressed.
The track has an uninspired beat mixed with the occasional guitar sting. Rico’s lyrics weren’t much, but her flow as well was really lacking (especially since it stays the same for the entire song). She still has the inflections and the vocal quality to convince me that she’s trying at least, but I just didn’t care for her performance on this track.
Vaderz had a guest on it in the form of rapper BKTHERULA and she is horrific. She does the exact same flow as Rico except totally off beat and with an unconvincing voice. I can’t imagine any of her music sounds like this because she sounds like she wasn’t ready to record an aggressive track like this.
Not a good sign for the record.
I was hoping this track was just a random one-off track, but it was, in fact, the leading single for her new mixtape Las Ruinas. This track, along with the following two singles, would harken a shift in sound for Rico. While she’s always had the capability to get wild and angry on tracks, she’s still maintained a pop mind when it comes to her production (Making a mixtape entirely produced by Kenny Beats will bring that perception).
This project is going for a more rock sound in the production. Theoretically, this should make sense. In my opinion, Rico is most interesting when she gets aggressive and mean on a track. The fact that her most streamed song on Spotify is a song about fighting proves the hostile vibe works for her audience.
Here’s the issue.
The following two singles from the mixtape are the tracks Intrusive and Black Punk. The former has a really annoying bass heavy beat and some eye rolling stuttering production a la Madonna from the 2000s. The latter is somehow underdeveloped yet also completely barren of any potential. Both songs had a few lines I liked, but I wouldn’t return to either of them again.
Unfortunately for me, the album only gets worse from there.
Barring one other track, I’d call Black Punk my favorite track on the mixtape.
…And that song isn’t even any good.
The first non-single we get on the tape is Messy. This song is unbearable.
We get the most annoying hook I’ve ever heard in my life, some more really irritating stuttering production and some really bad singing from Rico in the background. Teezo Touchdown is the gentleman handling the hook here (notable to me for ruining a semi decent Tyler, the Creator track Runitup) and I can say with 100% certainty that I wish to never hear him on a song ever again.
I wasn’t going to mention the fifth track because there’s profanity in the title of the track, but it has to be mentioned that it’s the worst track on the album. Some disgusting autotune coats Rico’s voice for the hook partnered with a beat which feels identical to every song before it except they replaced the guitar with a bad synthesizer.
The only bright spot on the first half of this record is the hook on the track Gotsta Get Paid. The beat is really wacky but I actually don’t mind it as much as the other stuff here. The verse isn’t anything special and it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the best Rico tracks on any of her tapes or her album. At the very least though, the hook seems kinda reminiscent of something Rico might have appeared on one of her old mixtapes like Anger Management.
You might think from hearing all of this that this is all the album offers. Some really misguided rock based tracks and some lesser normal Rico tracks.
Unfortunately, that’s not all we have to cover.
The fifth and (as of now) final single from this project is Watch Your Man featuring… Marshmellow?
Marshmellow…?
I know I said earlier that Rico had poppier taste in production than some of her contemporaries, but I can’t think of a bigger mismatch than Rico and Marshmellow.
To his credit, Marshmellow actually makes a beat which sounds like it belongs on this album, albeit with heavier synth than guitar. To both Rico and Marshmellow’s detriment, the track doesn’t work. This track does firmly mark a shift in the album tone though. At this point, Rico completely abandons this rock/punk motif and jumps into… dance music.
Oh no.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the dancier tracks on Nightmare Vacation, but they at least fit stylistically with the rest of the album. On this mixtape, they are a complete eyesore.
Or whatever the listening equivalent of an eyesore is. An earsore.
Rico takes the time to remix a track from producer and singer Fred again.. called Jungle. It is the most generic dance track you’ve ever heard except with a really hideous sampled hook and some stupid bars from Rico. The next track Dance Scream isn’t much better as we get a boring dance beat, some weirdly lovey-dovey bars from Rico and no hook at all, replaced with some noise.
I can gleam that Rico is saying “Dance Scream” in there somewhere, but she’s drowned in autotune and buried in the mix. It’s like whoever is producing it has no confidence in Rico and wants to pretend she’s not actually there.
I’ll refrain from going track by track through the rest of the album because it’s more of the same from here. Some really horrific production, some really gross autotune on Rico’s voice and some really anachronistic lyrics from Rico about love. She gets a little more earnest on the tracks Easy and Chicken Nugget, but those tracks are so worthless otherwise that I can’t recommend listening to them just for the lyrics.
I mentioned in my review of Denzel Curry’s album Melt My Eyes See Your Future that I’d hate for an artist to feel like they’re moving backwards. I figured that the sound Curry went for on that album was the future of his sound, so I decided I wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to his next project.
I cannot say the same for Rico.
I’d like to say the same because I have a lot of respect for her and the music she’s made. I can’t imagine she made this and thought it was finished or even salvageable. She actually scrapped a mixtape before putting this one out because she wasn’t feeling it. I can’t imagine whatever was on that scrapped tape is worse than what we have on Las Ruinas.
My verdict? Listen to her last two mixtapes Nasty and Anger Management. Listen to her album Nightmare Vacation. Don’t listen to Las Ruinas. There’s not a single track worth going out of your way for. I can only hope this was a brief misstep for Rico because if this is the direction her music is going, I won’t be moving in that direction with her.