Taylor Swift: Leaked ‘Famous’ Conversation Is ‘Character Assassination’

Taylor Swift says that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian engaged in “character assassination” by leaking a recorded conversation between Swift and West. Photo: Tinseltown/Shutterstock.com

Taylor Swift promptly responded to Kim Kardashian’s exposing Snapchat regarding husband Kanye West’s controversial song “Famous.”

On Sunday night, Kardashian released snippets of a conversation between West and Swift with the caption: “Judge for yourself.” In the vide”‹o,”‹ Swift and West have a seemingly friendly phone exchange over West’s “Famous” lyric,”‹ “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” “”‹I really appreciate you telling me about it, that’s really nice”‹,” Swift said”‹, adding, “For you to ask me if I’d be okay with it, I really appreciate it. I’d never expect you to tell me about a line in your song”‹.”

Swift and her spokesperson had repeatedly denied approving the lyric ”” particularly West’s line, “I made that bitch famous” ”” while West and Kardashian claimed that Swift knew about the song and lyrics before the release. On Instagram, Swift posted a screen grab statement with the caption: “That moment when Kanye West secretly records your phone call, then Kim posts it on the Internet.”

“Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song?,” the singer wrote. “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.”

Swift accused West and Kardashian of “character assassination” and repeated her assertion that she hadn’t heard the finished version of the song prior to its release. “He promised to play the song for me, but he never did,” Swift wrote. “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.”

Kardashian resurrected the feud in her recent interview with GQ Magazine, claiming that there was video evidence of a phone conversation where Swift heard the lyric and gave West permission to use it. “She totally knew that that was coming out,” Kardashian said in the interview. “I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved … So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew.”

Kardashian also told GQ that the reason she had not released the footage was because of a potential litigious situation. “[Swift’s camp] sent an attorney’s letter like, ‘Don’t you dare do anything with that footage,’ and asking us to destroy it,” said Kardashian.

A rep for Swift declined to comment on Swift’s statement.

West released the Life of Pablo single “Famous” in April. The lyric references Swift’s 2009 VMA Awards, when West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech onstage saying that Beyonce should have won the award. When the song was released, Swift repeatedly denied that West sought and obtained her approval for the controversial lyric.

Taylor Swift’s Statement on Leaked “Famous” Conversation

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. 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. I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009.