July Smörgåsbord: Nicki Minaj, the HAIM album, and a couple of green peppers

Roc Nation drama, the book that's been haunting me, and the perfect summer salad

Okay I lied about taking a summer hiatus— my goal was to post once a month this year, and if I don’t, the part of my brain that likes reading challenges and hitting word counts is going to eat me alive. Also this shit is a breeze compared to book revision.

Here are the Annoying Blondes on my mind this month, and what I’d go long-form about if I had more time!

Roc Nation probably did cheat Nicki Minaj out of her tour money.

Readers, you do not know how badly I wanted to go to a 2009 show Nicki played in Brooklyn in support of her Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape. None of my friends wanted to go with me, and I wasn’t cool enough at the time to go alone. Being a Barb for so long has been a harrowing experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone— it’s almost as traumatic as being a Swiftie. Two weeks ago, Nicki began publicly accusing Jay Z and his CEO of Roc Nation, Desiree Perez, of cheating her out of some of her tour money. The context is that Nicki Minaj’s 2024 Pink Friday 2: Gag City tour grossed over $108 million. Tweets claim her incomplete payout might be due to a clause in her contract, or because she didn’t sign something in time. Pink Friday 2 was apparently the most successful female rap tour in history, and Nicki feels she didn’t get her flowers for it, or her due. I believe her! I was here for the drama until she dragged SZA into it. Anyway, I will always wish her well (mentally, financially, spiritually, emotionally).

Dear Old Nicki… please come back!!!

Sera and Ben Forever (I’ve been chasing the high of this book since I read it last month).

Extremely pleasing edition. And a gorgeous dedication

Leaving Las Vegas is a novel written by John O’Brien, an alcoholic who shot himself soon after he sold the film rights to the book (you may have heard of the Mike Figgis film starring Nic Cage and Elisabeth Shue— it’s more famous than the book). The novel is divided into three parts. The first follows Sera, a Vegas prostitute who works for herself after running away from her LA pimp (she gets gang raped by some college kids in the first thirty pages, it’s horrible but mostly off the page). Part 2 follows an alcoholic named Ben Sanderson who has recently lost his job. He decides he’s going to cash his severance, sell everything he owns, and move to Vegas to drink himself to death (reason being that in Vegas, you can get alcohol at any hour of the day or night. Grim, yes.) In the third, shortest section, they find transcendental love in a hopeless place.

The novel is pure and kind-hearted despite its darkness, successfully atmospheric, and full of strange and surprising sentences. There is one section in Part 2 where Ben forces himself to eat something, anything so he can keep down more liquor, and proceeds to try swallowing a part of a green pepper. The green pepper passage is the most devastating writing I’ve read all year. A bit dark for an AB rec, but I trust that my readers are dynamic. Here is a posthumous Esquire feature from 2015 if you want to learn more about O’Brien. Fun fact: he once wrote an episode of The Rugrats (but hated the changes they made to the script so much he went on a bender, relatable).

Can Spotify please stop auto-playing Lorde and Renée Rapp after the new HAIM album? I beg.

More like Women in Music Part IV, am I right? The Haim sisters are true musicians with real soul and this is a plea to Spotify to not play “Mad” by Renée Rapp after I get to the end of I Quit. I want to hear like, Lindsey Buckingham or something. Or at least Sheryl Crow, to whom I Quit is an obvious homage! I loathe the music listening experience of the modern age. I prefer Renée Rapp in the form of hilarious interview clips. Virgin by Lorde btw… two or so smashes on that. To be fair I haven’t listened straight through more than twice. For me, she may have peaked with Melodrama.

A greek salad (NO tomatoes) is the best lunch for when it’s hot out.

One green pepper (hello again), One red pepper, red onion, two Persian cucumbers, large block of feta, five kalamata olives, Maldon salt, a generous amount of pepper, EVOO and red wine vinegar. No tomatoes because even though it’s tomato season and I love them, they get in the way of what is otherwise a satisfyingly crunchy salad. New York summer is disgusting, but one of the greatest gifts has been living next to a really excellent produce market, so it’s nice to walk over, grab the vegetables I need for the salad, come home, and make it for lunch. A couple weeks ago, I ate this salad for seven days straight, and I’m not a creature of habit!

Juno Mars is so good at gambling.

About a decade ago, Bruno Mars walked into Antica Pesa while Estelle and I were waiting for a table, and the host gave us free champagne because they had to prioritize seating him and his crew. For some reason we started calling him Juno Mars that night, which still successfully cracks me up, I don’t know why.

Not too long ago, Juno was rumored to be $50 million in debt to MGM Resorts for gambling, though MGM has denied this. So it’s a good thing every song he records spends a century on the Billboard Hot 100. “APT.,” his new song with BLACKPINK’s Rosé, is primed to do the same (I just listened to it for the first, and probably only, time). Born gambler, this guy! ✪