There are years of history between Taylor Swift and Kanye West. They’ve gone back and forth from being enemies to being friends, and now it seems they’re back to square one. Swift recently opened up about what she thinks of West now, and she didn’t hold anything back.
It all started with an interrupted speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, but things really came to a head when West released his song “Famous” in 2015. The rapper claimed he got the OK from Swift to include the lines, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that [expletive] famous.” After the song was released, Swift protested the lyrics, which led to West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, posting a recording of a phone conversation between West and Swift. In that recording, West plays the first part of the line, of which the singer seemingly gives her approval.
Kanye West and Taylor Swift almost became friends again
Taylor Swift spoke about the animosity between herself and West in an interview with Rolling Stone. When she and West first reconnected in 2015, Swift was initially optimistic. “…we’d go to dinner and stuff. And I was so happy, because he would say really nice things about my music,” she said. “It just felt like I was healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19.” Another MTV awards show, however, would soon change how she viewed him.
After Kanye West was chosen to be honored with a Vanguard Award at the 2015 MTV VMAs, he called Swift to personally ask her to present the award to him. “…We had maybe over an hour long conversation, and he’s like, ‘I really, really would like for you to present this Vanguard Award to me, this would mean so much to me,’ and went into all the reasons why it means so much, because he can be so sweet,” Swift recalled. That sweetness soon turned sour when West remarked at the awards show that Swift giving him the award would boost the ratings.
“And I’m standing in the audience with my arm around his wife, and this chill ran through my body,” the singer said. “I realized he is so two-faced. That he wants to be nice to me behind the scenes, but then he wants to look cool, get up in front of everyone and talk [expletive]. And I was so upset.”
Taylor Swift isn’t the only one with bad blood
Swift initially got over the encounter after West sent her a bouquet of flowers. Then, however, came “Famous” and the infamous phone call. That’s the point when Swift finally called it quits. “I was like, ‘I’m done with this. If you want to be on bad terms, let’s be on bad terms, but just be real about it.'”
She then mentioned Drake, who was also involved in a feud with West. “It’s the same thing,” she said. “Getting close to you, earning your trust, detonating you.” In Drake’s case, rapper Pusha T, a close friend and collaborator of West, revealed the existence of Drake’s child despite the fact that it had been a well-kept secret from everyone outside of Drake’s innermost circle.
West denied any involvement and apologized to Drake for sending “negative energy” towards him. Still, Swift insists West “gravely affected the trajectory of Drake’s family and their lives.” To this day, Swift and West keep a wary distance from one another, which might just be for the best.