Big Ds, Engagement Yurts, and is Cardi B a Rapper?

Taylor Swift retirement, Cardi Nicki cold war, and living in a reality TV world

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Okay, wow. Did this summer not feel unbearably heavy, long, and exhausting on every front? I barely got to do any summering at all, I request a redo! A year ago, my phone reminds me, Dusty and I were in Chelva, settling into our month-long honeymoon in Spain… oh, time is so cruel…

At least Taylor Swift is having a great summer. Travis Kelce proposed to her in his backyard, inside some sort of rose garden trellis yurt he had installed.

Seems like the kind of magical enchanted hideaway my girl would dream of being proposed to in. My question is, how did he come up with this idea? It seems so her vibe, so baroque fairytale perfect. It looks like what I imagine is on the other side of the bridge of her folklore 2021 Grammys performance.

English teacher and Gym teacher sitting in a yurt, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

The reverberation of the engagement has been, in itself, news— and the response largely enthusiastic. These are the four reactions that stuck with me most, I think together they capture the scale and intensity of it all:

1. A professor who let his class go early because he “couldn’t focus” after hearing the news. If this is real, it’s totally insane.

2. The cringe millennial Swiftie reporter who told Tr*mp during a cabinet meeting. As my friend Khalid said, “Swifties as weapons against us.”

3. The CBS reporter who said she “feels like Paul Revere” while breaking the engagement news live on air.

4. My friend who works construction overheard three conversations on his worksite about the Taylor and Travis engagement the day after it was announced. The HVAC install guy said it feels like America’s own royal wedding. Uh huh!!!

I am happy for my girl. I watched all of the New Heights podcast ep because of my unpaid job as a Swift anthropologist, and my biggest takeaway is that Travis is exactly what Taylor’s nervous system needs.

My second-biggest takeaway was this: Taylor revealed that her dad, Scott Swift, is good friends with Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who used to coach the Eagles— Taylor’s home team. And Reid apparently told Scott that Kelce was a good guy. Once I heard this, a lot of things began to make sense to me.

Post-podcast, the concept of Taylor Swift retiring dawned on me for the first time…ever.

It feels almost unimaginable, given how consistently she’s released music since 2020— on top of the barrage of Eras Tour media coverage, and the NFL of it all. The domestic bliss she projects with Travis on the podcast is certainly part PR move, but I think it also hints that The Life of a Showgirl may be the last big bang before she winds down.

Showgirl is TS12, one album away from TS13. Calling thirteen Swift’s “favorite number” is actually diminishing its power because it’s more like her lode-star or talisman at this point, but you get it. Walk with me:

A couple weeks ago I was high and mapped out her discography onto Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. You may be right, I may be crazy— but! This exercise made me wonder if TS13, the one after Showgirl, will be her last album for a while. I don’t think she’s disappearing forever— she has her side quests in place, like directing her movie— but I suspect once she hits 13 she’ll take a break from recording to focus on having a family. Something we know she’s wanted for a long time.

Let me cook…

So while it’s been nonstop Taylor saturation since folklore era, we should all enjoy her while we can… because I have a feeling that soon, she’s going to tell everyone to fuck off for a while. Happy for her!

I wandered into a rock store last weekend while visiting family in Jersey, and there were only a few opalite stones left— because track 3 on Showgirl is called OPALITE. LOLLLL

Speaking of anticipated albums, Cardi B is dropping her sophomore album, Am I The Drama…? seven years after her Grammy-winning debut.

In a recent interview, she told Zane Lowe she recorded 80 songs for the new album. I thought, is that it? Seems low to me.

The marketing rollout has been fascinating to watch. This album has been years in the making, and to give you a sense of just how long: her 2020 smash “W.A.P.” (ft. Megan Thee Stallion) and her 2021 hit “Up” are both on the track list for Am I The Drama…? which already certifies the album platinum. Cheating? Yeah, a little. Rewatching the “Up” video really hammers home how long it’s been since 2021.

Anyway, it’s clear there’s serious money behind her return, and I can’t help but notice a shift in how Cardi talks about her rap career: on this press tour, she is positioning herself as a bonafide New York rapper, almost in Jay-Z’s lineage.

Cardi is iconic and refreshing and smart and a comedic genius— never have I ever scrolled past a video of her opining or talking shit (highly recommend this highlight reel from her most recent court appearance.) Do I think of her as a rapper per se, the way I think of Jay-Z or Nicki Minaj or Foxy Brown as a rapper? Well, no! When you consider how Cardi’s second single off AATD…? is a pastiche of the Jay-Z classic “Imaginary Player,” it tracks with Nicki’s Twitter crash-out about Jay-Z and Roc Nation a few weeks ago, which I covered in my July post. Cardi seems to have all of Atlantic Records behind her: Nicki has the more storied rap career, so this must piss her off.

So I thought it was pretty funny that on the day Cardi announced “Imaginary Playerz,” Nicki tweeted about Lana Del Ray’s Ethel Cain diss track, shifting the focus to her!

Nicki knew what she was doing, these women are in a COLD WAR! I don’t watch reality TV, but I follow celebrity micro-aggressions on the internet, which is basically the same thing.

Before Bryan Kohberger, the Idaho stabber, is locked up forever, let me say one thing…

Bryan Kohberger was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison for killing four University of Idaho students in cold blood using a KA-BAR knife back in 2022. I don’t really want to post his face, but I do want to draw your attention to one particular victim statement that went viral after his sentence hearing.

In the clip above, victim Kaylee Gonclaves’s mom reads a statement from Kaylee’s younger sister. The statement is:

“You may have received As in high school and college, but you’re gonna be getting big D’s in prison.”

Then the judge says “thank you,” and everyone claps.

Kohberger is obviously a sick individual, and the Gonclaves family is obviously grieving. But I’ll admit I had the same reaction when I watched this as I did when the cringe millennial Swiftie journalist ask Tr*mp in his cabinet meeting today if he heard about Taylor and Travis’s engagement. And that reaction is uhh… okay?

Because Kohberger took a plea deal, a lot of people— including two out of four of the victims’ families— feel cheated out of the big, public trial they were expecting. That is why some impact statements, like this one, came off as soo extra.

But seriously— Big Ds in prison?! I asked my therapist friend to weigh in from his professional perspective to explain: why does the public feel they are so righteously owed an explanation for the Idaho murders? Why is a confession, and all the gruesome details that have emerged even without a trial, not enough?

His response:

“I think the most obvious answer is that people just like stories with satisfying endings… There ‘has’ to be a cathartic moment. These days, our culture is totally fine with gooning, but it hates a ruined orgasm—and Bryan Kohberger taking a plea deal after years of suspense felt like the premature ending no one wanted.

But I also think there’s something deeper… People don’t just want a guilty verdict. They want an explanation. They want a manifesto. People want to believe there’s a coherent reason behind something so horrifying… People are obsessed with fitting chaos into neat moral containers.

And to be frank, uncertainty can be unbearable… This righteousness or demand for Kohberger to explain himself, that’s what I find most alarming. Even if he did explain—what would it give us? Words only go so far. They help us frame experience, but they can also dilute it. Some things are fundamentally unknowable… Violence like this often doesn’t ‘make sense.’ Sometimes there’s no story that will make it okay. That hunger for meaning is what keeps people watching, waiting, theorizing—not just because they want ‘justice’—but because they want meaning.”

This is technically my August post btw. I wanted to finish this while I was at Telluride with the Earth to Michael team but it was nearly impossible to engage with real life while I was there. It was a totally unreal experience, maybe I’ll publish my Telluride WAG diary next. Have a great first day of school everyone! ✪

If you enjoyed this I am humbly asking you to like this post and subscribe, if you don’t already <3 Thank you for reading Annoying Blondes!