That trifling man won't leave Teyana Taylor alone

By all appearances, 2026 is Teyana Taylor’s year. In January, she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in One Battle After Another. She just graced the cover of TIME magazine for their Women of the Year edition, and in just over two weeks, she could win her very first Oscar. So isn’t it peculiar that in true, bitter ex fashion and almost as if on cue, here comes her ex-husband, Iman Shumpert, on a podcast, pulling a stunt to cloud her ability to enjoy what is very much her moment.

In a lengthy conversation with Shannon Sharpe on Club Shay Shay, Iman discussed the loss of his dad, his NBA career, and his marriage to Teyana Taylor. In discussing marriage and dating, though, he put some pretty salacious sound bites into the ether – and Teyana is not having it.

He spoke about a situation that unfolded between Teyana and another one of his exes, Kayla Nicole, after Kayla went on Angel Reese’s podcast in 2024 and said some things that got a great deal of attention. When asked about the pettiest thing she’d ever done in a relationship, Kayla shared the story of how she responded to being ‘dumped’ by someone she dated, clarifying at the start that the pair were not in an exclusive relationship at the time, before going on to say:

“I was dating a guy, and he dumped me through a text message, and he dumped me for this singer/actress. Dumped me for her. Lied about it for months, then popped out with her and became this public thing,” she explained.

Kayla said that this relationship was known to be ‘iconic’ and when the pair gained traction, she decided to be petty.

“I dressed up as her. I dressed up as that lady for Halloween,” she told Angel, saying that the viral photos were still somewhere out there and that she didn’t care if people saw them. 

At the time, it didn’t take long for people to put two and two together. They quickly found images of Kayla imitating Teyana for a 2016 music video. And despite it not being quite the Halloween story she initially told Angel, the mystery had been solved.

Teyana’s real-time response was iconic. She posted a carousel to Instagram highlighting her numerous accomplishments set to the tune of “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift, who of course is now engaged to Kayla’s ex, Travis Kelce.

Looking back at the debacle, Iman had this to say during his podcast appearance with Shannon:

"Me and Kay are good friends. It's not like a thing where I'm going to be mad at her because she did that. She low key was just speaking her truth. It was a funny story honestly,” he said.

Then he revealed that she had since apologized. To him.

“She hit me up, and that's what I do appreciate about Kay. She hit me up and was like, 'I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking. I'm trying to tell a funny story on the spot.'"

Iman went on to insinuate that Teyana had done some sort of obsessive search on the internet to have found out what Kayla was saying – and that this was a strictly women thing.

“Some of that stuff, that be for the girls. We don’t really have a rabbit hole to go down. You dated her, she said this, then it’s over for the men,” he said.

And perhaps that’s what prompted Teyana’s latest response – where she bypasses Iman’s antics completely and addresses Kayla’s misconduct, saying she had ‘ill and petty’ intentions. And Teyana’s not wrong. While I wish she would’ve hung Iman out to dry, she’s probably done it so many times before that she doesn’t see the point in doing it again. Plus, she shares children with him. Perhaps it’s more of a courtesy to her children than him.

Teyana’s response touches on a few things – first, the fact that she really does move with grace. Teyana’s managed to avoid a lot of public spats and beef and much of that has to do with the fact that she’s unproblematic. She works hard and minds her business, even in situations where she has every right to put people on blast. I wrote here about how she tried to keep the details of her divorce private in order to protect Iman, and how he messed that up by leaking details, which coincided with increasing publicity surrounding her relationship with Aaron Pierre.

I also appreciate that she’s clocking Kayla for being unnecessarily disrespectful and distasteful. Because how do you go from saying you ‘don’t care’ who sees the photos during the podcast, to then apologizing to Iman only, once the story got out and people put the pieces of the puzzle together?

But I also love that Teyana revealed how she ended up seeing it. Because it’s a big middle finger to Iman and Kayla – and a reminder that they will never be on her level.

“She knew people would dig. So automatically my name is attached to the nonsense. At that point, she didn't need to @ me, that was clearly a quick search. My name was trending without an @ before even saying a word.”

Read that last sentence again and tell me it’s not iconic. What Teyana is really saying there is that she is very famous. She has a lot of fans. They will search and they will bring it to her. And she is absolutely correct.

She then went on to say that the ‘math wasn’t mathing and the facts weren’t facting’. And according to internet sleuths, Kayla and Iman are leaving out the part where Teyana was pregnant at the time of his fling with Kayla – and there is a belief that she was his mistress. With Kayla saying that he ‘lied’ about his relationship with Teyana for months, it begs the question of whether she was a willing participant in an affair – or, was she truly unaware? If she was unaware, why apologize to Iman and not Teyana? Talk about math not mathing.

Having garnered a reputation as a ‘professional ex-girlfriend’, Kayla’s likeability is decreasing bit by bit because it's getting harder and harder for her to be portrayed as a true girl’s girl. Had her disposition been different in her podcast appearance with Angel, maybe it would’ve been easier for people to believe that she and Teyana were being misled by Iman. The internet loves a dogpile on a man, especially one like Iman. Moreover, had she reached out to Teyana to apologize, considering she was the one who really deserved an apology instead of him, she might have fared better in all of this. But instead, she’s become just as at fault as Iman – and that’s saying something.

But the very last thing Teyana touched on was important. And it was about Kayla’s tendency to bait and switch, similar to her nonchalant attitude towards people seeing the photos, only to then issue an apology, walking her audacity back instead of saying it with her chest.

“She pulled the Black card when it came to Taylor Swift, but in the same circle, turned around and tried to bully the Black woman that was married to her [ex].”

This is an important element of this story. Because it highlights the nuances. This transcends race. Kayla has had tension with Taylor Swift and Teyana Taylor. And despite anyone’s disposition towards either of them, the Taylors are among Hollywood’s most unproblematic celebrities. So what does that say about Kayla?

My criticism of Kayla doesn’t render Iman not being deserving of the smoke, too. But I think what we’re seeing with Teyana’s refusal to even entertain this tactic of Iman’s, is that in cases where men have disappointed women to the extent Iman has disappointed her, we turn to other women. And to have been so publicly and intentionally disrespected by Kayla is probably what bothered Teyana the most at the time, even if she’s past it now.

All of this is a perfect example of how expert men are at triangulation. Because through a podcast he did, the conversation is now about Teyana – and not in a way that her massive breakthroughs she’s experiencing right now are at the centre – but instead, the conversation is in proximity to him. This is how men centre themselves when they see women experiencing levels of success. Hell, just joy in general.

We saw this with Offset as Cardi announced her last pregnancy and her upcoming tour. All of a sudden he appeared on a podcast, dropping sound bites in hopes to take some of the spotlight away from her as she had her moment. And even in that moment, so much of the criticism was redirected to Keke Palmer for having him on in the first place.

When men behave badly, the blame gets skirted over to the women around them. And part of that is because we know to always expect so much more from women than men, but it means women are constantly being held to an impossible standard and that they remain on the hook for men and their misgivings.

To Teyana’s point, she and Kayla are both Black women in the spotlight. And it’s disappointing that rather than rally together and establish some sort of alliance, Kayla is sh-tting on another Black woman in her podcast appearances and it's disappointing. But no more disappointing than Iman’s masterminding of this whole debacle.

What’s characteristic about Iman and Offset is that they have a hard time generating headlines for themselves unless they attach themselves to their exes. We never hear about Iman unless the story is about Teyana. And we never hear about Offset unless it’s attached to Cardi.

Meanwhile, we hear about Teyana and Cardi B daily. Because they’re both in their own lane, powering forward and making big moves. And if Iman and Offset spent as much time learning from these women as they did talking about them on podcasts, they might experience more success and longevity than an intermittent headline here and there, which always seems to move the needle in both of them becoming less and less tolerable.