Tampa rapper Nico Sweet in a monochromatic blue room. The person sits on a white bed with blue-braided hair, looking toward another version of themselves sitting in a chair in the foreground. The walls are a deep cornflower blue with a large, darker blue map-like shape painted above the headboard. The person in the foreground wears a light blue button-down shirt and pink-rimmed sunglasses, looking back toward the bed.Nico Sweet Credit: nicosweet / bandcamp

Nico Sweet is still on the rise. Since T-Pain praised her on his Twitch stream and CL named her one of 22 Tampa Bay rappers to watch in 2022, she’s spent the last four years opening for other artists and honing her craft. 

The chill beats and steady flow of her 2025 album Dark Red take listeners back to the 2018 sweet spot of artists like NoName and Saba—likely the Chicago influence of her DJ, PharaohUnchained. The album’s standout track is “Keebler,” where she alternates between a gritty whisper, rapping and singing with a solid feature from YZM.

Sweet, AKA Stephanie Nicole Crawford, isn’t waiting to hit the Grammys stage to promote fellow Tampa artists. On YouTube and Instagram, she dissects lyrics and storytelling in the songs of other underground rappers.

She’s got a fitting lineup of flowy rap openers at , an Ybor City staple that just changed ownership.

Dark Red by Nico Sweet

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This article appears in Mar. 12 – 18, 2026.

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Selene San Felice is managing editor of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Prior to joining CL in 2025, she started the Axios Tampa Bay newsletter and worked for her hometown paper, The Capital in Annapolis,…
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