Rico Nasty Explains Her Stance on Fans Encouraging Her to Twerk

Last year, Rico Nasty had to endure several rude and offensive responses from rowdy crowds while opening for Playboi Carti on his King Vamp Tour. In fact, someone threw a bottle at her during a show and she jumped into the audience and confronted the culprit. But what also offends Rico is fans encouraging her to twerk when she’s performing. In an interview with XXL, the Maryland-bred rhymer explained why this upsets her and why she’s not the kind of artist who twerks on command.

“This is probably the worst thing that you could put up while a female rapper is performing, even if she is gonna twerk,” Rico says after holding up her phone with the word “Twerk” displayed to demonstrate what fans in the crowd do to her. “This is so disrespectful.”

Rico adds that throughout her career, twerking was never part of her act, so it’s rude for fans to expect that from her every time she hits the stage.

“It’s pointing to this ever being why I’m on this stage or this pertaining to anything that I’ve ever done in my career,” she continues. “That’s not what I do. You go on my Instagram right now. Do I have videos doing this?”

“And for all my young girls, who, I mean, you do what you want to do and it’s lit and it’s fun,” she adds. “I’m just trying to make art and perform my songs and go. I’m not trying to be something that I’m not. You shouldn’t try to make somebody something that they’re not.”

To be clear, Rico is not against women in hip-hop or beyond who like to twerk on stage, but it’s just something that she doesn’t do for her brand.

“That’s why I don’t want to take away from the people who do dance routines and they do twerk because as a woman you are a performer, bro,” explains the 2019 XXL Freshman. However, personally, Rico isn’t feeling it. “This should never happen, bro [Rico holds up her phone with ‘twerk’ on it]. We are not at a strip club. And even at the strip club, this wouldn’t be funny ’cause they are already strippin’, bro. What is that?”

Rico says that twerking is a matter of personal choice and shouldn’t be viewed as the standard of beauty or a requirement to be a successful female artist in the rap game.

“Being a girl is just random nowadays,” she offers. “It’s really, really random. And you really have to stick together. And you really have to… know what you want out of this and know what you want to be looked at as,” she affirms. “Because, if you don’t, they’ll be sure to give you whatever image they think works for you. So have your own.”

Watch Rico Nasty explain her thoughts on twerking below.