RICO NASTY COMING TO ATLANTA’S THE TABERNACLE ON 10/21
Posted by Liz and John Attaway, 9/29/25
FALL NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR KICKS OFF IN SEPTEMBER
NEW ALBUM LETHAL
OUT NOW ON FUELED BY RAMEN
Last night, Rico Nasty performed the buoyant and radiant “CRASH” for Jimmy Kimmel Live! from her recent album LETHAL out now Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). The performance marks LETHAL’s TV debut ahead of her fall tour kicking off on September 19th at Chicago’s Riot Fest and ends Nov 4th in Los Angeles at The Fonda. Recently, Rico and her band performed a stunning, raw set for NPR’s Tiny Desk. Tickets are on-sale HERE.
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.
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.
Tour Dates
Sept 19th – Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
Sept 21st – San Francisco, CA @ Portola
Sept 23rd – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
Sept 24th – Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
Sept 26th – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex – Rockwell
Sept 28th – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
Oct 1st – Chicago, IL @ Metro
Oct 2nd – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom
Oct 3rd – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Oct 5th – Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
Oct 7th – Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
Oct 8th – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues – Cleveland
Oct 10th – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
Oct 11th – Baltimore, MD @ Nevermore Hall
Oct 12th – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Oct 14th – Boston, MA @ House of Blues – Boston
Oct 15th – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Oct 18th – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore – Silver Spring
Oct 19th – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
Oct 21st – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Oct 22nd – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
Oct 24th – Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution
Oct 25th – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham
Oct 27th – Houston, TX @ House of Blues Houston
Oct 28th – Dallas, TX @ The Bomb Factory
Oct 29th – Austin, TX @ Empire Garage
Nov 2nd – Pomona, CA @ The Glass House
Nov 4th – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
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.
Praise for LETHAL
“explosive, expansive and razor-sharp, a sonic evolution that fuses her iconic “sugar trap” roots with searing rap-rock chaos and surprising softness.”
– Billboard
“Fierce”
– Variety
“One of the premier rappers of her generation”
– Rolling Stone
“Rico Nasty gives us glimpses of a rap rockstar with no intentions of slowing down.”
– Paste Magazine
“Rico Nasty’s new era is shaping up to be electrifying…Full of charisma and unpredictable in a totally unique way, Rico Nasty is at her best when she’s controlling her own destiny.”
– Consequence
“Rico Nasty turns up the heat…reminding fans why she’s an original rage-rap iconoclast”
– BET
“‘Lethal’ is one of her most wide-ranging projects yet, from her rock-oriented abrasion to the sweeter, brighter sounds of her trademark sugar trap, to dark, moody rap songs done in the way that only Rico Nasty can. “
– Brooklyn Vegan
