Four years after Kim Kardashian shared an edited phone call between her husband Kanye West and Taylor Swift discussing his “Famous” lyrics, extended portions of the conversation were leaked online late Friday night.
In clips posted to Twitter, the rapper, 42, is heard asking Swift, 30, to release his new song on her Twitter account. “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 tells the Grammy winner on the phone.
After telling Swift he included a “very controversial line” about her in the song, the pop star nervously asks West what the lyrics are.
West then tells Swift he’s been mulling over the lyrics for eight months and warns her “it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit” and to “brace yourself for a second.”
A wary Swift asks if it’s “gonna be mean,” and West acknowledges even Kim initially felt it was “too crazy” but had come around. “It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line,” he says.
Kevin Mazur/WireImage Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West
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“So it says, ‘To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex,” continues West with a chuckle. Responds Swift with a laugh: “That’s not mean.”
Further discussing his proposal to have her release the song, Swift — who expresses relief that the lyrics aren’t about her being “that stupid dumb bitch” — tells West she needs to “think about it because it is absolutely crazy.”
Later in the call, West tells Swift the original lyric he wrote was, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” (The lyric that made it into the final version of the track is “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”)
In another leaked video, West asks Swift how she would feel if he included a line that said “I made her famous,” to which she responded: “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. 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.”
After “Famous” was released in February of 2016, Swift’s rep told PEOPLE the singer “declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyrics, ‘I made that bitch famous.’”
Christopher Polk/Getty Images Kanye West and Taylor Swift
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In June of 2016, Kardashian West told GQ the singer had told her husband she would “laugh” and tell media she was “in on it the whole time” in a phone call. Then a month later, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star branded Swift a snake on social media and leaked edited snippets from the call on her Snapchat account.
“If people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘He called me and told me before it came out . . . Joke’s on you, guys. We’re fine,’” Swift is heard saying in the footage Kardashian West posted on Snapchat.
Swift’s rep was quoted in the GQ article as saying that “much of what Kim is saying is incorrect. 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 b—‘ in referring 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.”
Moments after Kardashian West posted snippets of the call, Swift released a statement on her Instagram slamming the couple. “Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song? It doesn’t exist because it never happened. You don’t get to control someone’s emotional response to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the entire world,” the singer wrote.
“Of course I wanted to like the song. I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would love the song. I wanted us to have a friendly relationship. He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard. Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination.”
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While Swift went on to record and tour reputation, a dark album inspired by the depressive period she went through following the drama, the West has remained mum about the feud while Kardashian West told Andy Cohen last January she was “over it.”
For a transcript of the newly leaked portion of Swift and West’s phone conversation, keep reading below:
KW: —old school s—, yeah. I’m doing great. I feel so awesome about the music. The album’s coming out Feb. 11. I’m doing the fashion show Feb. 11 at Madison Square Garden and dropping the album Feb. 12, that morning. It’s like …. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aw thank you so, so much. Thank you. It feels like, real. I don’t know, just ‘Ye, Apple, Steve Jobs-type music. Like, 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.
TS: What would people … I guess it would just be, people would be like, “Why is this happening?” And I had something to do with it, probably.
KW: The reason why it would happen is because it has a very controversial line at the beginning of the song about you.
TS: What does it say? [nervous laughter]
KW: It says, and the song is so, so dope, and I literally sat with my wife, with my whole manager team, with everything, and try to rework this line. I’ve thought about this line for eight months, I’ve had this line and tried to rework it every which way, and the original way that I thought about it is the best way, but it’s the most controversial, so it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit, so can you brace yourself for a second?
TS: Yeah…
KW: Okay, alright. It says—wait a second, you sound sad.
TS: Well, is it gonna be mean?
KW: No, I don’t think it’s mean.
TS: Okay, then let me hear it.
KW: Okay, um … and the funny thing is when I first played it and my wife heard it, she was like “Huh? What? That’s too crazy, blah, blah, blah.” And when Ninja from Die Antwoord heard it, he was like, “Oh God, this is the craziest sh—! This is why I love Kanye,” that kind of thing. It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line. I just wanted to give you some premise of that, right?
TS: Okay.
KW: So it says, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex.” [chuckles]
TS: [chuckles] That’s not mean.
KW: Okay. Yeah, well, this is the thing why I’m calling you because you got an army. You own a country of motherf—ing two billion people, basically, that if you felt that it’s funny and cool and like hip hop and felt like, you know, just The College Dropout and the artist like, ‘Ye that you love, then I think that people would be like way into it, and that’s why I think it’s super genius to have you be the one that says, ‘Oh, I like this song a lot, like, yeah, whatever. This is cool. Whatever, it’s like, I got like s— on my album where I’m like, “I bet me and Ray J will be friends if we ain’t love the same bitch.”
TS: Oh my [laughs]. I mean, I need to think about it because you hear something for the first time, you need to think about it because it is absolutely crazy. I’m glad it’s not mean though. It doesn’t feel mean, but like, oh my God, the build-up you gave it. I thought it was gonna be like that stupid dumb bitch, like, but it’s not. Um, so I don’t know. I mean, the launch thing, I think it would be kind of confusing to people, but I definitely like, I definitely think that when I’m asked about, of course I’m gonna be like, “Yeah, I’m his biggest fan. I love that. I think it’s hilarious,” but um, I’ll think about it.
KW: Yeah, you don’t have to do—you don’t have to do the launch and retweet. That’s just an extra idea that I had, like, but if you think that that’s cool, then that’s cool. If not, we are launching the s— like on just GOOD Fridays, on Soundcloud, the site, s— like that.
TS: You know, the thing about me is like, anything that I do becomes a feminine think-piece, and if I launch it, they’re gonna be like, “Wow,” like this thing—like they’ll just turn it into something that … I think if I launch it, it honestly like, it’ll be less cool ‘cause I think if I launch it, it adds this level of criticism, ‘cause having that many followers and having that many eyeballs on me right now, people are just looking for me to do something dumb or stupid or lame, and it’s like almost … I dont know, like I kind of feel like people would try to make it negative if it came from me. Do you know what I mean?
KW: Yeah.
TS: I try to be super self-aware about where I am, and I feel like, I feel like right now I’m like this close to overexposure.
KW: Well, this one, I think this is a really cool thing to have.
TS: I know, it’s like a compliment [laughs].
KW: I had this line where I said—and my wife really didn’t like this one because we tried to make it nicer. So I said, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” and my wife was really not with that one. She was way more into “She owes you sex,” but then the owe part was the feminist group-type s— that I was like, “Ahhh.”
TS: That’s the part that I’m kind of—I mean, they’re both really edgy, but that’s the only thing about that line is that it’s like gonna … the feminists are gonna come out, but I mean, you don’t have to give a f—, so…
KW: Yeah, basically. Well, what I give a f— about is just you as a person and as a friend. I want things—
TS: That’s sweet—
KW: —that make you feel good. I don’t wanna do rap that makes people feel bad, like of course like I’m mad at Nike, so people think like, “Oh, he’s a bully. He ran on stage with Taylor. He’s bullying Nike now, this $50 billion company.”
TS: Why are people saying you’re bullying Nike?
KW: Because on “Facts” I said like, “Yeezy, Nike out here bad, they can’t give s— away.”
TS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s just what you do though.
KW: [laughs]
TS: [laughs] I mean, I wouldn’t say that it’s like possible to bully a company like Nike where—I mean, um, yeah, I mean …
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