How Rico Nasty And Kenny Beats Became The Loudest Duo In Rap | The Formula, S2E1

Rico Nasty and Kenny Beats make one of the unlikeliest duos in rap. It started with one impromptu studio session and one primal scream. Rodney Carmichael | October 29, 2021 In April 2019, Rico Nasty and producer Kenny Beats released the joint mixtape Anger Management. Concocted to sound like a temper tantrum from start to finish, it was the culmination of a nearly two-year run in which they’d effectively become the loudest, unlikeliest duo in rap. In this week’s episode of The Formula, the first of a new season that digs into the collaboration between rappers and producers, we sit down with each of them in their respective cities — Rico at a performance space she frequents in the DMV; Kenny at his home studio in L.A. — to talk about their genre-bending discography and how it remade Rico into rap’s raging queen of scream. They lay the groundwork by recalling the making of their signature anthem, “Smack A B****,“ a song recorded in their first impromptu studio session when