At only 22, Rico Nasty is out to conquer time through sheer force of will. In a cultural moment saturated with empty calls for self-love, Rico’s cathartic anger provides a welcome specificity and an explicit way forward. Across the emotional landscape of this year’s Anger Management, which producer Kenny Beats likened to the arc of a temper tantrum, Rico expresses the need to be heard in order to heal. “Time Flies,” though straightforward in a way that the tracks on Anger Management are not, serves as a fitting follow-up. She crystallizes the preceding album’s message when she sings “I live every day like I’ll die by the night time/It took me so long getting back to my right mind.” Her voice doesn’t have the usual ragged edge that’s come to be her signature sound; only when she mentions the hard work she’s endured does it come through: “Five days straight no rest, oh well.”

Her raspy tone adds a wink to that final “oh well,” expressing self-satisfaction rather than exhaustion. Otherwise, her voice swells up around the track’s warm synths and trap beat, calling back to her earlier sound on 2017’s quasi-bedroom-pop mixtapes Sugar Trap 2 and Tales of Tacobella. There are moments of exceptional candor, like when she draws out the last syllable as she sings “I bring the heat like the summer,” and when she exclaims “I’m always beating the odds.” Despite the song’s preoccupation with time passing, Rico is only racing against herself.