More than a decade ago, Taylor Swift created an album called “reputation” about her conflict with Kanye West and his then-wife, Kim Kardashian. It debuted as a response after he directly called her a “bitch” in the song Famous and Kardashian told her followers to troll Swift’s social media, which led to her disappearing for almost a year.
It all began at the 2009 MTV Music Awards, when Taylor Swift won the award for music video of the year for “You Belong With Me.” Kanye West interrupted the award presentation to say that Beyoncé deserved the award more than Swift. The moment quickly went around the world, bringing criticism toward the rapper.
Later, West apologized to Swift and wanted to make peace, so they posed together on red carpets. However, the white flag would not last forever, as the rapper wrote the song “Famous” in 2016, directly alluding to Swift with the line “I made that bitch famous,” which led Swift to speak out. The icing on the cake was the music video, where West made a nude mannequin identical to her.
Kardashian entered the scene, claiming that at the time her husband West had in fact asked Swift for permission and, on Twitter (now X), she made a post calling Swift a snake, along with the video in which the singer supposedly gave her consent. This caused all of the socialite’s followers to cancel the singer. The hashtags #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty and #TaylorSwiftisaSnake trended, so she disappeared from social media for almost a year.
Taylor Swift rose from the ashes in 2017 with the album Reputation, where in the music video for “Look What You Made Me Do” snakes appear around her and she references Kanye West and Kardashian. All the songs speak directly about what happened between her, the rapper, and his ex-wife.
In 2020, internet users published the full video of the call between Swift and West, where he told her about including her in a song, but did not give any greater detail about it. That confirmed what Swift had said: “I had never given my consent to be called a bitch or for a bust of me to appear in that music video.”
A story that reminds us that even from your worst falls, you can create something good.