The Epic Celebrity Showdown: Kim Kardashian vs Taylor Swift – Who Will Come out on Top?

SINCE 2009, TAYLOR Swift and Kanye West have been locked in one of the tensest battles in celebrity history.

They mostly stayed out of each other’s ways after their first, infamous, televised moment together until a public reconciliation in 2015 made it seem like all of that was just water under the bridge. But who knew the worst was yet to come?

Things between Swift and West would not only worsen immensely in 2016, after West released his song “Famous,” but their web would soon entangle Kim Kardashian, Scooter Braun, and even Justin Bieber.

After the release of Swift’s eleventh album The Tortured Poets Department, it’s clear the wound remains open as she appears to take an extremely thinly veiled shot at Kardashian’s involvement in what she once called a “career death.”

Take a look back at everything that transpired since West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs 15 years ago.

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Kanye West jumped onstage after Taylor Swift won the “Best Female Video” award at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York. CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES
Sept. 13, 2009: Kanye Interrupts Taylor’s VMAs Speech
In 2009, Taylor Swift was a 19-year-old country star whose album, Fearless, was also a hit with mainstream pop fans. Her video for “You Belong With Me” beat out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” for Best Female Video, and she went to the stage to accept the award. So far, so good.

Then Kanye, as we all remember, jumped onstage, grabbed the mic, and said, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!”

Kanye was booed, and celebrities quickly rallied behind Swift, including the President of the United States himself (“He’s a jackass,” Barack Obama shrugged) and Beyoncé herself, who invited Swift onstage with her when accepting her Video of the Year award later that night.

West wrote an apologetic blog post, which he yanked, then wrote another, then finally express his regret on The Jay Leno Show, saying he was ashamed. He later contacted Swift to apologize by phone.

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But by this point, “interrupting Kanye” and his “I’mma let you finish” were internet memes and the incident had become one of the most parodied awards show moments, as Kanye might say, of all time. Of all time.

Nov. 7, 2009: Taylor Hosts SNL and References VMA Incident
Two months after the VMA moment, Swift hosted Saturday Night Live and addressed the incident with West with a joking line in her “Monologue Song.”

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“You might be expecting me to say/Something bad about Kanye/And how he ran up on the stage/And ruined my VMA monologue,” Swift said at the Nov. 7, 2009 show. “But there’s nothing more to say/’Cause everything’s OK/I’ve got security lining the stage/It’s my SNL monologue.”

September 2010: Kanye Apologizes on Twitter, Taylor Debuts “Innocent“

A year later, Kanye fired off a lengthy, apologetic tweet storm, saying he’d written her a song that he’d record himself if she didn’t want it, and he concluded with a simple “I’m sorry Taylor.” But Swift had a song of her own that seemed to address the controversy, “Innocent,” which she premiered at that year’s VMAs.

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“Innocent,” which walked a fine line between forgiving and condescending, would also appear on Swift’s album, Speak Now. (Cynics might note that this feud flares up when there’s an award show on the horizon, or one of the artists in question has a new album to promote.)

Nov. 5, 2010: Kanye Backtracks on Apology
The controversy seemed to have died down after that, but in an interview with Access Hollywood in October 2010, West listed Swift’s Fearless among recent albums that should not have won the Grammy for Album of the Year. And as interviewers kept mentioning the VMA incident, West struggled to explain and sometimes defend it.

On Minnesota radio station KDWB in November, he claimed his actions were not “arrogant” but “selfless.” He also claimed that the event benefitted Swift, saying that he helped her “have 100 magazine covers and sell a million [her] first week.”

Kanye West accepting the Video Vanguard Award from Taylor Swift at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards at Microsoft Theater in Lost Angeles KEVIN WINTER/MTV1415/GETTY IMAGES/MTV
August 2015: Taylor Presents Kanye With Video Vanguard Award at VMAs
In May 2011, Kanye West and Taylor Swift met on the red carpet at the Costume Institute Gala — without incident. The two exchanged a down-low hand slap. The hatchet seemed permanently buried when Swift was tapped to present the Michael Jackson Video Award to West at the 2015 VMAs.

Her speech concluded, “All the other winners, I’m really happy for you, I’m going to let you finish, but Kanye West has had one of the greatest careers of all time.” West’s acceptance was heartfelt but rambling, suggesting his issues with awards shows were far from settled.

Feb. 11, 2016: Kanye Mentions Taylor in New Song “Famous”
To premiere his latest album, The Life of Pablo, West took over Madison Square Garden and livesteamed a lavish event dubbed Yeezy Season 3. The spectacle received a wide range of responses, but everyone shook their head at one set of lyrics in his new song “Famous:” “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous/Goddamn, I made that bitch famous.”

Kanye later said he’d gotten Taylor’s permission to drop that line, but a statement from Swift’s PR people disputed that: “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’”

Kanye took to Twitter, as he does, where he stuck to his story that Swift approved of the lines.

Feb. 15, 2016: Taylor Shades Kanye During Grammys Speech
The ball was in Swift’s court, then, when 1989 won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Her response was impassioned and as clearly directed at West as it could be without mentioning his name.

“As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there: there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame,” Swift said onstage.

But that was hardly the end of the battle.

Feb. 17, 2016: Kanye Calls Taylor “Fake-Ass” in Leaked Saturday Night Live Rant
And the beef rages on. Details about the source and the exact context are still sketchy, but two days after Swift’s Grammy win, Page Six posted audio of an enraged West apparently venting backstage at SNL on Feb. 13.

The clip is essentially an extended “Do you know who I am?” tirade — in which the rapper likens himself to Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Picasso, and other icons — but West can be heard throwing in a quick Swift diss as well, labeling the singer-songwriter “fake ass.”

June 2016: Kim Joins the Battle and West Drops “Famous” Video with Nude Taylor Replica
The squabbling over “Famous” had largely died down until an incendiary quote appeared in a GQ profile of Kim Kardashian.

According to Kim, Kanye not only called Taylor for approval of the line, but their call was captured on video — and Swift, Kardashian said, knew about this footage. (In response, a Swift representative stated, “Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”)

It might have seemed like an offhand remark. But a celebrity as publicity savvy as Kim Kardashian does not make offhand remarks.

Then, on June 24, West debuted a nine-minute video for “Famous” at an exclusive Tidal event at the Forum in Los Angeles that featured Kanye and Kim in bed, surrounded by nude replicas of a number of celebrities.

At the place of honor, to Ye’s right, was a fully undressed Taylor Swift facsimile. West insisted the video had nothing to say about the individuals represented, but was just “a comment on fame.” Then he tweeted: “Can somebody sue me already #I’llwait.”

July 2016: Kim Snapchats Video of Taylor Approving Controversial “Famous” Lyric; Taylor Calls Move “Character Assassination”
Up until this point, the feud over Kanye’s crass “Famous” lyric — “For all my Southside n—as that know me best/I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex” — has been a classic case of he-said-she-said.

But on a July Sunday night, Kim Kardashian introduced a key, highly damning piece of evidence into the court of public opinion. She vented her frustration on Keeping Up With the Kardashians; “I’ve had it with people blatantly treating my husband a certain way and making him look a certain way; I’m gonna say how I feel.” Then, she took to Snapchat to reveal the smoking-gun video she teased in GQ, which clearly shows Swift approving the supposedly controversial lyric.

“What’s dope about the line is it’s very tongue-in-cheek either way,” the pop star says after West reads her the line. “And I really appreciate you telling me about it, that’s really nice.”

After the video reveal, Swift quickly fired back, taking issue with being called a “bitch” in the song and indicating that West never played her the full track prior to release as he promised: “Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination,” she wrote on Instagram.

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Almost seven years after “I’mma let you finish,” this epic beef has seemingly reached a new apex.

Aug. 24, 2017: Taylor Releases “Look What You Made Me Do”
After a long hiatus, Swift releases “Look What You Made Me Do,” the feisty lead single off her forthcoming new album Reputation.

With vengeful lyrics like “I don’t like your little games/ I don’t like your tilted stage,/ I don’t like you,” plus an effect that sounds as if she’s singing through a phone, the track seems to allude to her long, public feud with West.

November 2017: Taylor Releases Reputation With More Shots at Kimye
Although she’s never confirmed that her lyrics are about her Kimye feud, fans have long speculated that several of the tracks on her LP Reputation are aimed at West and Kardashian.

On “I Did Something Bad,” she sang both lyrics “I never trust a narcissist, but they love me,” and later, “If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothin’, I don’t regret it one bit ’cause he had it coming.”

Then on “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Swift alluded to her friendship-rekindling with West and how she felt tricked and bamboozled by the rap star after she misled her following the 2015 VMAs. She described the rapper as “shady” and referenced how West has lost several other friends because of his antics.