by Emily Banaitis

For over a decade now, Taylor Swift and Kayne West have been at odds. It all started in 2009 when Kayne West jumped on stage while Taylor Swift was accepting an award at the VMA’s insisting that Beyonce should have won the coveted Best Female Video Award. It was a moment that would last in the memory of pop culture history and triggered a long-term feud between the artists.

In 2015, time had seemed to heal all wounds as Kayne and Taylor posed for pictures together with Kayne even claiming Taylor was asking to work together on some songs. “She wants to get in the studio and we’re definitely going to go in,” he said, before adding, “Any artist with an amazing point of view, perspective, fan base, I’m down to get in the studio and work. I don’t discriminate.” as quoted in Entertainment Tonight. In February of 2016 things had seemingly taken a turn for the worst after Kayne released his song Famous. 

The problem laid in the line of his song where he raps “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? cause I made that b***h famous.” Kayne took to twitter a few days after the release of the song claiming that Taylor and him had an hour long conversation and stated that she thought the lyric was funny. Taylor then took the stage at the Grammys later that month and suitably undercut Kayne by stating “I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments and your fame,” as quoted by Entertainment Tonight.

It wasn’t until July of 2016 where Kim Kardashian got involved in the feud. In an interview with GQ she reiterated what Kayne had said, that Taylor knew about the lyric and was fine with it and even explained that the phone call had been recorded in which Taylor responded claiming to not know about. Fast forward to July 27, 2016 where Kim leaked snippets of the conversation on snapchat, and the next day had the pop world “canceling” Taylor for lying. 

The drama continued on for the next few years, with Taylor trying to build back her reputation until around a week ago when the full 25-minute conversation between Taylor and Kayne had been leaked to the public. The conversation had included parts that Kim K clearly left out. Unfortunately the conversation seemed to only mention the first half of the lyric, but never the second half, the one that seemed to cause the most controversy. 

A few days later Taylor spoke out on Instagram in a quote from Entertainment Tonight saying “Instead of answering those who are asking how I feel about the video footage that was leaked, proving that I was telling the truth the whole time about *that call* (you know, the one that was illegally recorded, that somebody edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family, and fans through hell for 4 years)… SWIPE UP to see what really matters.” 

Kim rebuttled on Twitter three days later claiming that Taylor lied through her publicist and that Taylor “manipulated the truth of their actual conversation in her statement when her team said she ‘declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message,’” as quoted in Entertainment Tonight. Later that night Taylor’s publicist responded to her tweet claiming Kayne never called asking for her approval on the song. 

For now that is all we know of the decade long feud but only time will tell if there is more to come out of this situation.

Emily Banaitis can be reached at emily.banaitis@theminaretonline.com.