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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Rude_Lifeguard on 2024-11-27 00:40:41+00:00.

You’ve probably heard of the incident before. At the 2009 VMA’s,19yo Taylor Swift wins the “Best female video” award for “You Belong With Me”, she takes the stage ready to celebrate her first VMA win when a wasted Kanye West stumbles on stage to let everyone know that Beyonce should have won before walking off, robbing Taylor of her moment.

What you might not know about is how this feud continued to develop from that moment on and how for the last 15 years both Kanye and Taylor have kept the flame alive and made sure everyone knows they will never get over that moment.

Background:

On November 11th, 2008 Taylor released her sophomore album “Fearless”, which would skyrocket her to fame after the album debuted at #1 on multiple charts, including the hot 100 and sprung 2 of the biggest hits of her career in the form of “Love story” and “You belong with me”.

Meanwhile, 13 days later on the 24th, Kanye released his 4th studio album “808s & Heartbreak”, his first release since the passing of his mother and the end of his engagement that saw him experimenting with a new sound with which he continued his careers upward tragetory.

A month later we see the first public interaction (for lack of a better word) between the two, when Taylor spoke about her desire to work with Kanye during an interview with allure magazine:

I had this dream that Kanye West called me and said “I wanna rap one of your songs”. Then i woke up and was really mad that it was just a dream (source)

The 2009 VMA’s:

On the night of the 2009 VMA’s, Taylor showed up to the award ceremony looking straight off a disney princess movie in a carriage, while Kanye showed up late with a half empty bottle of Hennessy.

Later in the night, the “Best female video” category was called and Taylor won her first VMA over Pink, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga and Beyonce. As she started to make her speech the mic was snatched from her hand by Kanye:

“Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish. But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” (source)

He said before giving the mic back and getting off stage as the camera panned to a booing crowd and a surprised Beyonce before cutting to comercial.

Immediatly after, the producers had to scramble to figure out how to move foward with the night as Kanye and Beyonce were still nominated for a number of awards that had not yet been called and Taylor was expected to perform live from Times Square.

Dave Sirulnick, one of the producers of the show, had a heated discution with Kanye in which he asked him to leave the building, meanwhile, Van Toffler, then president of Viacom, went after Taylor and her mother, both of whom were crying, to apologize and promise that they were going to make things right for her to prevent her from leaving before her performance.

After that Van went to talk to Beyonce, who was also crying to her father, and in order to stop her from leaving, let her know that she was going to win the “Video of the year” award and “wouldn’t it be nice to have Taylor come up and have her moment then?”. And so it happened (source)

Taylor performed “You belong with me” and soon there after, Beyonce won the big award of the night and asked her to come up on stage and finish her speech (source)

At the end of the show, while talking to the press, Taylor said of the incident:

I was standing on stage and I was really excited because I’d just won the award and then I was really excited because Kanye West was on stage … And then I wasn’t excited anymore after that,

Of Beyonce she said:

Um, they told me to stand by the side of the stage. Um, and I didn’t really know what was gonna go down, but I thought it was just so wonderful. and gracious of her to do what she’s always done. She’s always just been a great person.

On his part, Kanye released an “apology” to his blog (probably while still drunk) that was quickly deleted (source)

I’M SOOOOO SORRY TO TAYLOR SWIFT AND HER FANS AND HER MOM. I SPOKE TO HER MOTHER RIGHT AFTER AND SHE SAID THE SAME THING MY MOTHE WOULD’VE SAID. SHE IS VERY TALENTED! I LIKE THE LYRICS ABOUT BEING A CHEELEADER AND SHE’S IN THE BLEACHERS!..I’M IN THE WRONG FOR GOING ON STAGE AND TAKEN AWAY FROM HER MOMENT!.. BEYONCE’S VIDEO WAS THE BEST OF THIS DECADE!!! I’M SORRY TO MY FAINS IF I LET YOU GUYS GOWN!!! I’M SORRY TO MY FRIENDS AT MTV. I WILL APOLOGIZE TO TAYLOR 2MRW. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!!! EVERYOBODY WANNA BOOOOO ME BUT I’M A FAN OF REAL POP CULTURE!!! NO DISRESPECT BUT WE WATCHIN THE SHOW AT THE CRIB RIGHT NOW CAUSE…WELL YOU KNOW!!! I’M STILL HAPPY FOR TAYLOR!!! BOOOYAAAAWWWWW!!! YOU ARE VERY TALENTED. I GAVE MY AWARDS TO OUTKAST WHEN THEY DESERVED IT OVER ME, THAT’S WHAT IT IS!!! I’M NOT CRACY YALL. I’M JUST REAL. SORRY FOR THAT!!! I REALLY FEEL BAD FOR TAYLOR AND I’M SINCERELY SORRY!!! MUCH RESPECT!!!

He followed this up the following day with a second apology:

 “I feel like Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave. That was Taylor’s moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry.” (source)

Immediatly after and in the days following the incident, a number of public figures came out in defense of Taylor and condemmed Kanye’s behavior.

Pink called him a piece of shit, Donald Trump asked people to boycott all things Kanye, Barack Obama called him a jackass, Joe Jackson called for him to be blackballed, and Kelly Clarkson questioned if he didnt get enough hugs as a child (source)

The next day, Kanye was scheduled to perform alongside Jay-Z on the Jay Lennon show, however, he requested to talk before the performance in order to apologize again:

It’s been a difficult day. I’m just dealing with the fact that I hurt someone or took anything away from a talented artist or from anyone, because I only wanted to help people … I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong … It’s someone’s emotions that I stepped on. It was rude, period. (source)

Days later, on the 19th, Taylor gave an interview to The View in which she addressed the situation once again:

I’m not going to say I wasn’t rattled by it. I had to perform live five minutes later, so I had to get myself back to the place where I could perform. … All the other artists who showed me love in the hours following that, I just never imagined there were that many people out there looking out for me. (source)

In November, Taylor had the “last” laught during her first appearance on SNL where she joked about the incident during her opening monologue:

You might think I might say/something bad about Kanye/and how he ran up on the stage and ruined my VMA monologue/but there’s nothing more to say/because everything’s okay/I’ve got security lining the stage.

Meanwhile, due to the intense backlash Kanye decided to leave the lime light in order to get himself together and figure out a way to come back from this. According to one of his collaborator, while he was working on his next album in Hawaii, Kanye was worried that the incident might have cost him his career which led to him creating G.O.O.D Fridays, a weekly free music release ahead of the release of his fith studio album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”

After the infamous Taylor Swift moment, I sort of did a little self-exile, just to get away from paparazzi and to have people not, you know, just fucking with me constantly. I went to Hawaii and took all the creative energy that I wanted to express and we put it into an album called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. (source)

Innocence vs Runaway

On September 12th, 2010, Taylor and Kanye would return to the VMA’s to debut their new songs which both reference the incident.

Taylor went up first to perform “Innocent”, a song in which she tells Kanye that he’s not what he did, he can still find the right path and after all, he’s still an innocent:

It’s okay, life is a tough crowd

32 and …

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