Really, Kanye? Of all the lyrics on his new album The Life of Pablo — and, really, just all his lyrics in general — that's the one that gave him a creative breakthrough?
At a concert in Manila, West performed Famous, his Nina Simone-referencing Pablo track with an infamous line about Taylor Swift, for the first time live. After performing the song twice, he reignited his highly charged back-and-forth with Swift about the lyric with new comments about Famous, writers' block and the "Imma let you finish" heard around the world, before doing the song a third time.
"You know the night I'm talking about, when I just said what everybody else was thinking," he continued. "So if I get in trouble for saying the truth, what's being said the rest of the time?"
Hadn’t this whole Kanye vs. Taylor nonsense—which began, of course, seven years ago, when West barged into Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech to argue that Beyoncé should have won—been declared over? Taylor Nation was aghast. Austin Swift posted an Instagram video in which he casually tossed a pair of West’s Adidas Yeezy sneakers into the garbage.
I tell Swift the whole thing reminded me of Al Pacino’s famous line as the aging Mafia don Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III. “ ‘I thought I was out . . .’ ” Swift knows exactly where I am going and finishes it: “ ‘They pull me back in!’ ” “I think the world is so bored with the saga,” she goes on. “I don’t want to add anything to it, because then there’s just more.”
I get why Swift would not want to fuel the dispute, but it’s not hard to see a connection between West’s credit-taking and the long tradition of men being dismissive—actively as well as subconsciously mansplainy—of the hard work and success of women. This is something Swift has become hardened to, having spent much of her early years being mainly recognized not for her songwriting gifts (which just about everyone now agrees are rare and special) but for who she was dating, her fame distilled into what Swift calls “my incredibly sexist Men–of–Taylor Swift slideshows.”
“You know, I went out on a normal amount of dates in my early 20s, and I got absolutely slaughtered for it,” she says. “And it took a lot of hard work and altering my decision-making. I didn’t date for two and a half years. Should I have had to do that? No.
“I guess what I wanted to call attention to in my speech at the Grammys was how it’s going to be difficult if you’re a woman who wants to achieve something in her life—no matter what,” she adds.
The day after the awards, Swift went shopping at Barneys in Beverly Hills—“I was like, ‘I’m going to buy some nice shoes today’ ”—and says she was approached by a number of women, mothers in particular, who thanked her. “Their response was really beautiful. You never know what anyone’s response is going to be. So when it’s good, it’s really nice.”
In case you forgot about West's 2009 VMAs moment -- during which he interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech to praise Beyonce -- he's happy to offer a reminder.
West and wife Kim Kardashian attended a wedding this weekend for club owner David Grutman and his new wife, Isabela Rangel, and during the reception West made a guest appearance during publisher Jason Binn's speech, recreating his 2009 MTV VMAs moment when he grabbed the mic during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech.
"Jason, I'mma let you finish," West said, to the delight of the guests. "But Dave and Isabela had one of the best weddings of all time." Clearly Gutman appreciated the shout-out, as he posted the moment to Instagram.
It’s been almost seven years since Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s VMA speech in 2009 to declare that Beyonce, in fact, had the “best video of all time,” but the rapper can’t seem to let the topic go. In a new radio interview with Steve Harvey, Yeezy brought up Swift out of the blue, even after Harvey said he “really wasn’t” trying to talk about her.
“It’s not about Kanye West. It’s not about Taylor Swift,” West said. “There’s a lot of people in America that feel like they don’t have the platform to stand up and express their closet racism. Before they had that platform, one really easy way to express it was to say, ‘Eff Kanye West.’”
West went on to blame Britney Spears’ 2007 meltdown, saying, “As soon as Britney shaved her head and they saw that money going down, they had already marked what that award was going to be that night,” indicating that the powers-that-be saw Swift as the next pop superstar.
In her new GQ cover story, Kim Kardashian West backed up her Kanye West's assertion that Taylor Swift knew about a contentious lyric from his song "Famous" before the song was released. "I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous" were the lyrics. A rep for Swift denied this assertion for a second time in a statement to GQ.
At the time, a representative for Swift responded: "Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single 'Famous' on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, 'I made that bitch famous.'"
Now Kardashian West has weighed in. "[Taylor] totally approved that," Kim told GQ. "She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved."
Kim said she has two forms of proof. First, she claimed Rick Rubin was there. "So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew." Second, Kim said that the call between Kanye and Taylor was filmed. "Kim’s husband commissions videographers to film everything when he's recording an album," GQ notes, "for posterity (and possibly, one day, a documentary)." In addition, Kim alleges that Swift knew about this footage and was nervous about it. "They sent an attorney's letter like, 'Don’t you dare do anything with that footage,' and asking us to destroy it."