Song You Need: “Intrusive” is Rico Nasty at her most unvarnished

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Rico Nasty has had a wild six months. She's handled the ignominy of dealing with misogynistic Playboi Carti fans on tour and entered camp heaven, seeing herself embodied as a Snatch Game character on RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s firmly in album mode right now, though, with new song “Intrusive” following recent release “Vaderz” ahead of the imminent arrival of a new project, her first since 2020’s Nightmare Vacation. By the sound of this latest cut, we’re getting deeper into the psyche of the Maryland artist than ever before.

“This song tells the story of intrusive thoughts with some industrial elements,” Rico Nasty said in a statement accompanying the song’s DIY and psychedelic new video. The thoughts spill forth from her mind as if appearing in real time, like nails hammered through a board. They rage from the bratty (“You bitches suck!”) to hilarious (“I’m only here to smoke more blunts and spit on racist cunts”). Throughout, Rico Tasmanian Devils her way across the distorted breakbeat, expending all of her energy and clearing her mind of all the noise. Talking through your thoughts might be good, but on “Intrusive,” Rico Nasty puts forward the argument that firing them into the sky is way more cathartic.