Rico Nasty reflect on 50 years of hip-hop.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, Rico Nasty sat down with People Magazine for a new interview. “50 years is a half of a century, so… I don’t know,” he said. “We can look at the glass half full of the glass or the glass half empty, but I’m really, really happy just to be a part of it. To be named or to actually just be able to live as an artist in today. I’m very happy about that. I’m excited for the future especially with AI and s–t.”
During the conversation, Nasty shouted out Eminem and revealed that it was his song “Stan” that inspired her to be a rapper. “Oh no. You know what’s so crazy, it was “Stan” on the Marshall Mathers LP… It was “Stan” by Eminem that made me want to be a rapper,” she revealed. “I loved how it invoked every emotion. You felt scared, you felt excited, on the edge… It was almost like a horror movie. On the edge of your seat, waiting to see if this person was going to make the right decision. You almost feel bad for this person. It was very cinematic, that movie, it felt… that video was so cinematic.”
“And then it also gave me a perspective that I never really had before, which was like, “Yeah, a lot of these people, they have fans, but some of these people have fans that are…” They’re die hard, man. They wait for your responses. And that was… besides Tyler and Nicki Minaj, that was my first example of what a fan was, low key, just obsessive. He even looked like him. He even looked like him in the video. That was crazy.”
In the interview, she also praised Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday album. “I think that album represents being a girl who wants everything. And a girl who knows that everything is right on the tip of her fingertips. Which is just a great coming of age project when you wouldn’t think about it. Literally I was a little girl. I was first experimenting with my hair and Nicki Minaj bang was the first haircut that I got.”
“I was a follower for real. That s–t low key funny especially because obviously I don’t really remember these phases up until I get to talk about them like this. But the Nicki Minaj one was definitely… I had a cousin as well and he was gay, but he wasn’t out to the family and that was our s–t. We would just have competitions on who can learn the words faster. And we would both dress like Nicki Minaj. We would talk like Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj had an app. It was called the Pink Friday dictionary. And on it, every day she would upload new words that she would use. We had notifications for all that s–t. And we would learn the words and we would use them in our sentences and s–t.”
Eminem classic “Stan” was released as the third single from his third studio album ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’. The track featured English singer and songwriter Dido and it topped the charts in 12 countries including Germany, UK, Ireland, and Australia.
The song did not do well on the US charts, reaching at No. 51 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in December 2000. However, over two decades after its debut, “Stan” has been hailed as one of the best rap songs ever recorded by numerous publications, and has become a culturally significant phrase encompassing a full culture of online fan groups in the twenty-first century.
Check out the full interview here.
