Rico Nasty - Nightmare Vacation (LP)

Rico Nasty’s debut studio album, Nightmare Vacation, lands like a sugar rush with a steel cap boot. Released on 4 December 2020 through her own Sugar Trap imprint and Atlantic Records, it folds punk attitude, gleeful hyperpop chaos, and trap heft into something that feels both unruly and sharply designed. She’d already built a cult following off mixtapes like Nasty and the Kenny Beats collab Anger Management, but this one plays like a statement of range, a tour of all the corners of her style with the volume proudly stuck on red.

You hear it straight away on iPhone, produced by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs. The synths ping like pinballs, the bass blows out the edges, and Rico moves through the noise with a grin that sounds closer to a dare. It is catchy and abrasive at once, and you can trace a line from that track through the album’s taste for mangled textures and candy colours. There is plenty of gloss here, but nothing soft. Even the hooks come with serrated edges.

Own It struts where iPhone skitters, a flex anthem that treats confidence as a renewable energy source. Rico’s writing has a knack for turning a threat into a punchline, then back into a threat before the bar finishes. She can be gleefully rude, then suddenly precise, and the production gives her room to move. The beats are built for mosh pits and mirror selfies, which feels exactly right for a record that treats self image as performance art. The singles were rolled out like mini-events, each with its own look and mood, and the album stitches them into a fast, colourful ride.

Guests are used well, never as a crutch. Don Toliver and Gucci Mane slide into Don’t Like Me with different shades of smooth, the kind of contrast that makes Rico’s bite feel even sharper. Trippie Redd turns up too, a reminder that her scene-crossing instincts are real, not just branding. The features add flavour, but the record is unmistakably hers, anchored by that rasping bark and a sense of humour that sticks to the ribs.

OHFR? might be the purest distillation of the album’s spirit. It is rowdy, clipped, and built for the moment when a venue goes over the tipping point from energetic to feral. Rico’s voice slices through with a punk cadence that nods to the lineage of shout-along rap without ever sounding like pastiche. This is where her sugar trap idea really pops. Cute and vicious at once, with melodies that are easy to hum and drums that feel like they are elbowing you in the sternum.

Critics picked up on that balance. Across outlets like Pitchfork, The Guardian and NME, the consensus was that Nightmare Vacation is a bold, fun record that pushes Rico’s sound into new shapes without sanding down her personality. It is not trying to be tasteful. It is trying to be alive, and it mostly succeeds. If you came up on her early underground smashes, you will recognise the sneer, but the palette is wider, the hooks stickier, and the production more playful. It feels like a 2020 time capsule too, born in a year of online shows and internet chaos, where genre lines melted and the loudest ideas rose to the top.

For anyone crate digging, the album makes a strong case for Rico Nasty vinyl. The highs leap out of speakers, and the clipped distortions on tracks like iPhone and OHFR? get a satisfying bite on wax. If you are hunting for Nightmare Vacation vinyl, or looking to buy Rico Nasty records online, keep an eye on indie shops that champion new hip hop alongside noisy pop experiments. Rico Nasty albums on vinyl do not sit around for long, and there is a real joy in dropping the needle on side one and letting the chaos unfurl. If you are browsing vinyl records Australia wide, the right Melbourne record store will know exactly where to shelve this, probably in the kind of section where the staff picks have handwritten notes and a few exclamation marks.

Nightmare Vacation is a bright, brash entry point for newcomers and a victory lap for fans who always knew she could pull off a full length with this much colour and bite. It is messy in places, but the mess suits her. The record sounds like late night energy drinks and chipped nail polish, a grin that flashes gold and then sinks into a scream. Not every risk lands, yet the risks are the point. Few albums from that end of 2020 felt this fun, or this sure of their own weirdness. On vinyl, it hits even harder, which is exactly how it should be.