Brow Beat

The Week in Culture, “Speaking Receipts to Power” Edition

People walk along the ramp at the end of the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
A well-heeled attendee walks along the ramp at the end of the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

John Moore/Getty Images

Kim Kardashian kicked off this week by re-enacting the famous scene (you may know it better as a GIF) from Waiting to Exhale of Angela Bassett setting fire to a car when she posted a few Snapchats of a phone call between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, and then stepped back to smile upon the destruction she had wrought. Though she’s been insisting otherwise for months, the videos exposed Swift as a liar. (Or did they?) An all-out celebrity civil war ensued, Kim Kardashian was praised for her masterful media manipulations, and we all learned an important catchphrase: Show me the receipts.

Battle rages on in other fronts as well. If you read this roundup precisely because it’s not about politics, sorry, because in this week of Republican National Convention hoopla, culture and politics bled into each other. Melania Trump Rickrolled a nation—maybe she was just taking a European approach to speechwriting?—giving us an excuse to learn the history of the phrase your word is your bond. The soundtrack to the festivities was provided by Tiffany Trump’s forgotten pop single and the GOP-trolling stylings of Third Eye Blind. The merch was gross, Fox News viewers couldn’t handle a woman’s bare shoulders, and Slate created a fun new Trump-style multilevel marketing scheme for you to try at home! We look forward to next week with “spicy boi” Hillary Clinton and a stirring address from demagogue Chloë Grace Moretz.

While we’re looking forward, we’re also looking backward—to the 20-years-ago release of De La Soul’s dark, confrontational Stakes Is High. Jack Hamilton reminisced for Slate: “Stakes Is High is an album about the virtuous rigor of history in the face of easy narratives about past and future, a work by veteran rappers that begins as a celebration of tradition, then enfolds as a genre critique, and by its end has transformed into a genre celebration and critique of gauzy nostalgia.” The album fits into a larger conversation about how ’90s hip-hop has aged—and how we all have.

While you’re thinking on that, a few more links for your weekend enjoyment: