Oh Look, Kanye’s On Another Twitter Rant, This Time About Taylor Swift
Jeff Kravitz/GettyYou may have heard about this obscure rapper named Kanye West who released a new album yesterday…oh, that’s right, basically the whole world was aware of this fact. No matter whether you love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Kanye knows how to draw attention to himself.
Yesterday, at the Yeezy Season 3/The Life of Pablo event of a lifetime, he struck some nerves with a line in his song “Famous” regarding a certain singer he interrupted at the 2009 VMAs. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he raps. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” This, of course, rankled a lot of people who thought that was a very misogynistic thing to say, not to mention a gratuitous reopening of a beef that most people thought ended at last year’s VMAs, when Swift presented Kanye with his Lifetime Achievement award.
Kanye, being Kanye and having recently rediscovered his ability to captivate all of Twitter, decided to reply with a rant. This isn’t quite as glorious as his rant against Wiz Khalifa, but there’s definitely some interesting material to be gleaned. Check it out:
I did not diss Taylor Swift and I’ve never dissed her…
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
2nd thing I asked my wife for her blessings and she was cool with it
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
3rd thing I called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
4th Bitch is an endearing term in hip hop like the word Nigga
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
5th thing I’m not even gone take credit for the idea… it’s actually something Taylor came up with …
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
She was having dinner with one of our friends who’s name I will keep out of this and she told him
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
I can’t be mad at Kanye because he made me famous! #FACTS
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
6th Stop trying to demonize real artist Stop trying to compromise art
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
That’s why music is so fucking watered down right now I miss that DMX feeling
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
7th I miss that feeling so that’s what I want to help restore
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
8th They want to control us with money and perception and mute the culture
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
but you can see at Madison Square Garden that you can stop us
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
9th It felt like a seen from The Warriors ALL GODS ALL GODS ALL GODS in the buildin
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
not just the famous people there but the kids the moms the dads the families that came to share this moment with us
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
A compelling defense? Meh…it stands on weak legs of anecdotal evidence. Ye’s back to his reliable stump speech about art being censored, his fallback whenever he offends people (he probably knows about DMX’s recent hospitalization, so maybe that shoutout was very intentional). And with this now turning into a he-said-she-said story—Swift denies prior knowledge of the line in question—the real question to ask is this: why is Kanye so obsessed with sex?
There’s also a meta-thesis in here somewhere about Kanye’s ability to draw media attention like moths to a flame.