Taylor Swift vs Kanye West: the story from the beginning
di Roberta Tuccillo (VF)
The whole truth of the gossip and the phone call between the two singers
The beginning of the story goes back a few years. That’s when Kanye West composes a song that contains the line “I made that bitch famous.” He is referring to Taylor Swift and the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards shenanigans. When he interrupted the pop star’s award ceremony to say that Beyoncé’s video was the most beautiful.
It was an ugly scene that deeply scarred Taylor Swift. As she herself recounted in her documentary Miss Americana. But even worse is what happened next. Because Swift obviously didn’t like Kanye West’s verse at all. Publicly claiming that he should have at least had the courtesy to warn her.
Said and done. Immediately Kim Kardashian puts online the phone call in which Kanye West warns Taylor Swift that there would be a “strong” verse about her in one of his songs. She laughs about it and gives her approval. It’s 2016 and the pop star is literally full of insults on the net. “You’re a liar,” is one of the nicest things said to her (Kim Kardashian, for example, tells her she is a “viper”).
Taylor remains deeply disturbed by this. So much so that she left the limelight and social media for a long time. She was very sick at that juncture. It shows in Miss Americana: going from undisputed idol to public enemy number one on social in snap.
What happens then? The famous phone call in its entirety appeared on Twitter…. “Revenge is a dish best served cold and Taylor knows it” these were the words in the papers. Kim Kardashian had made cuts to give another meaning to the conversation: first, Kanye calls Taylor to tell her that he wants her to post his new song on her social media. Which actually contains “a very strong verse.”
Taken aback, Swift asks what this verse is and if it is bad. He claims that even his wife initially thought it was “too crazy,” but that it has since become her favorite. And here, what Kanye West replies. “To all my Southside n- that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex.”
After all that has happened, according to Kanye Taylor owes him sex. Swift laughs on the phone. And all she can do is say that it’s not a mean phrase. But that she needs to think about it a bit before giving her approval. “I have to think about it. When you hear something for the first time you need to think about it because it’s really crazy….”
It’s going to be a whole different story, isn’t it? Because the final version of Famous, Kanye West’s song, says, “For all my Southside n- that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.”
What happened? Taylor published the real call, without cuts, silencing all the rumors about her and claiming her own back, telling the truth.
So all Taylor Swift was able to state afterwards was that she was not aware that Kanye was calling her a “bitch” in his song, or even that he had made her famous. Well, this may not be what was said in the old famous phone call, but it’s what for many fans of Kanye and others, the truth.
