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Leaked Audio From Kanye West and Taylor Swift’s 2016 ‘Famous’ Phone Call Reveals Her Side of the Feud
The full truth. Four years after Taylor Swift‘s feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian regarding the lyrics in the rapper’s hit song, “Famous,” leaked audio of the full conversation between Swift, 30, and West, 42, seemed to prove that the pop star had been telling the truth about what was discussed during their now-infamous 2016 phone call — prompting the trending hashtag, #KanyeWestIsOverParty.
The beginning of the phone called featured West chatting with Swift about his 2016 album, The Life of Pablo, according to the leaked audio. After they exchanged what seemed like pleasantries, West then told Swift the main reason why he called her.
“So my next single, I wanted you to tweet it … so that’s why I’m calling you. I wanted you to put the song out,” he told Swift. She seemed hesitant and responded, “I guess it would just be people [would] like, ‘Why is this happening?’.”
“Well, the reason why it would be happening is because it has a very controversial line at the beginning of the song about you,” West explained. “What does it say?” Swift asked.
“So it says, and the song is so so dope. I’ve literally sat with my wife, with my whole management team, with everything and to try to rework this line, I’ve thought about this line for eight months,” the rapper said before playing the line. “I’ve had this line, I’ve tried to rework it every which way and the original way I’ve thought about it is the best way, but it’s the most controversial. So, it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit. Can you brace yourself for a second?”
“Yeah,” Swift said, still sounding hesitant. “Wait a second, you sound sad,” West said. “Well, is it gonna be mean?” Swift asked. West said he didn’t think it was mean and Swift asked him to let her hear the line.
“Okay. And the funny thing is, when I first played it and my wife heard it, she was like ‘What, huh? That’s too crazy,'” West said. But he added that when Ninja from Die Antwoord heard the line, he gushed that lines like that was the reason he loved West’s music. “And now, it’s like my wife’s favorite f–king line.”
After prefacing the line, West finally recited it for Swift instead of playing the track. “So it says, ‘To all my Southside n— that know me best / I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex,” he said with a laugh. Swift also laughed and added, “That’s not mean.”
West added that he felt the need to run the line by her before going forward with it in his song, and Swift seemed relieved that the line was not about her being “that stupid dumb bitch.” He asked her if she would be open to releasing the song, but Swift said she still needed to “think about it because it is absolutely crazy.”
At another point during their phone call, West admitted that the original lyrics was: “To all my Southside n— that know me best / I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” In a separate leaked video, West asked Swift how she would react or feel if he included the line, “I made her famous.”
“Did you say that? Oh God, well, what am I going to do about it at this point. It’s just kind of, like, whatever at this point, but I mean, you gotta tell the story the way it happened to you and the way that you experienced it,” Swift responded. “You honestly didn’t know who I was before that. It doesn’t matter if I sold 7 million of that album before you did that, which is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that and that’s fine. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear it.”
When “Famous” was released in February 2016, it included the lyrics: “For all my Southside n— that know me best / I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b— famous.”
After West’s wife, Kim, leaked part of the audio of their phone call online to try to prove Swift had approved of the lyric before the song’s release. Kardashian, 39, doubled down on her comments in an interview with GQ published in June 2016. Swift’s rep released a statement to deny the allegations.
“Taylor does not hold anything against Kim Kardashian as she recognizes the pressure Kim must be under and that she is only repeating what she has been told by Kanye West. However, that does not change the fact that much of what Kim is saying is incorrect,” read the statement obtained by GQ. “Kanye West and Taylor only spoke once on the phone while she was on vacation with her family in January of 2016 and they have never spoken since. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do. Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the term ‘that bitch’ in referencing her. A song cannot be approved if it was never heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian’s claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”
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