Rico Nasty Explains Her Credit Card Statement
The Maryland rapper talks through recent purchases, including her favorite energy drink, hair products, and a recent splurge on Nobu tacos.
Credit History is an interview series where we ask our favorite artists to comb through their credit card statements and tell us about what they bought, from the necessary to the frivolous to the outlandish.
From the time she was ready to “Smack a Bitch” on her breakthrough 2018 single of the same name, Rico Nasty has reserved the right to be angry on her records. Earlier projects like Nasty, Anger Management, and Nightmare Vacation built out her vision of a candy-colored wonderland fueled by rap, rock, and Jolly Rancher-hard punches for any opposition who would dare try to tamp her down. But as she became bigger and her genre-blending style grew more ambitious—particularly on 2025’s Lethal she noticed fan expectations were skewing in a direction she wasn’t comfortable with.
“I do the rock stuff and screaming stuff so well, people think Oh, she’s screaming, and they’re not really listening to what I’m saying,” she says. Anyone who suggests Rico has forgotten her roots, though, has another think coming. “They say my last two albums were very rock-forward and alt, but I’m still rapping. That’s the bottom line. I see rappers like NoCap and Ralo and their wordplay is so fun and cool. To think I’m not tapped in at that level? I’m a fucking rapper, even though they don’t wanna bring me up in those conversations. When they bring up female rap, it’s like a bitch that’s inspired by me, and then everybody else but me.”
Rx, Rico’s second project produced entirely by Kenneth Blume (f.k.a. Kenny Beats) after 2019’s Anger Management, is the inverse of the “I’m not a rapper, I’m an artist” argument many tout once they hit a certain level of fame. Though she’s happy to reach across the genre aisle, on Rx, she’s bringing mixtape energy to an album scope. Her punchlines tear through Blume’s production with catharsis and clarity—who else could cuss out ICE for coming after her friends one minute and rhyme about opps riding the coattails of her Burberry peacoat the next? Rico says Rx is a sequel of sorts to Anger, because “both projects are me figuring out what the fuck is wrong with me. Anger Management was me figuring out why I was yelling so much? Why was I so angry? Rx is me prescribing myself the confidence to embrace that and say whatever the fuck I want again.”
As cathartic as Rx is, Rico’s been about calm and stillness since the album’s release. She’s preparing for a fall tour—half solo, half as an opener for Paramore’s Hayley Williams—and has logged off the internet in favor of learning ceramics and enjoying time outside. The last ceramic item she made was a garlic grater, though the divots she made aren’t deep enough to actually cut the vegetable. “Ceramics is one of the only things where I need both of my hands to do it, so I can’t be holding my phone. I can’t smoke, I don’t make money from it, it’s not connected to fans. Nobody has a say in what I make. I feel like a fucking architect,” Rico explains.
Her recent purchases represent both her time out in public as Rico Nasty and her downtime as Maria-Cecilia Simone Kelly, a single mother who enjoys tending to her hair, her cat, and her toy collection.
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