Kanye West Tries to Interrupt Taylor Swift Again

Ten years agone this autumn, there came a VMAs moment that will live forever in infamy. It was the moment in which Kanye West stormed the VMAs stage as Taylor Swift attempted to have her award for Best Video by a Female Artist and told her, "I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all fourth dimension! One of the best videos of all fourth dimension!"

On one level, the fact that the scandal would become on to have such legs seems absurd. It was such a petty nothing of a moment! A drunkard celebrity with a history of being volatile acted out at an awards show: So what? Why was that such a large bargain? Why is it and then ingrained in our cultural consciousness now, 10 years later?

But the resulting fallout was explosive. What happened at the 2009 VMAs helped define Twitter every bit the conversation commuter it is today. The story foreshadowed Kanye Due west's eventual transformation into a pop civilization villain, which would be realized with W's embrace of Donald Trump and Trumpism. It set up the narrative that Taylor Swift would ever be a pop civilisation victim, for meliorate or for worse. And the way it has influenced their ii images in the decade since follows the lines of major schisms in American culture.

And then as the 2019 MTV VMAs arrive, permit'south have a expect dorsum at the 2009 VMAs and their long, long shadow.

when Kanye took that VMA from Taylor I was like "oh, weird" not "this will psychologically cripple both artists, driving them to madness"

— caitlin bitzegaio (@caitorade) August 27, 2017

Hither's exactly what went downwardly at the 2009 VMAs

Kanye West walks the carmine carpet for the 2009 VMAs, bottle of Hennessy in hand.

Getty Images

Kanye West arrived on the red carpet of the 2009 VMAs clutching a bottle of Hennessy. In pictures of the crimson carpet on Getty Wire, y'all can see the level in the canteen gradually dropping equally he makes his way upward the carpet and drinks more and more. Kanye wasn't performing that night, simply he was nominated in multiple categories, and he was seated in the front row. According to Billboard's oral history of the evening, he passed the canteen effectually to fellow celebrities as he waited for the show to kickoff.

Taylor Swift arrived on the ruby carpet in a fanciful glass pumpkin-shaped Cinderella charabanc, wearing a glittering silver gown. She was in the process of crossing over from the land music scene to mainstream pop, and for the commencement time, she'd been invited to perform at the VMAs to sing "You Belong With Me." She was also up for an award, for the "You Belong With Me" video. The coach and gown were a deliberate reference: Taylor was Cinderella, and the VMAs were the brawl at which she could make her entrée into the world of pop music.

Taylor Swift steps out of a Cinderella-style motorcoach on the 2009 VMAs red carpet.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Taylor was nominated in only one category, All-time Video by a Female Artist. Her big competition was Beyoncé, whose video for "Single Ladies (Put a Band On Information technology)" was one of the most acclaimed of the yr. Merely Beyoncé was also up for the far more prestigious Video of the Year award, for which Taylor was not nominated — so when Taylor won the Best Female Video honour before the ceremony had even reached its outset commercial pause, most people didn't translate her win as Taylor definitively beating Beyoncé. Information technology was more likely that Beyoncé would get her moment later in the nighttime.

Kanye disagreed.

MTV has removed the official footage of what ensued from the cyberspace, so most of the videos bachelor online are low-quality bootlegs that people made by aiming cameras at their living room Television screens. But here's what happened.

Taylor took the stage in her silver Cinderella gown to accept her award from Shakira. "Thank you so much!" she said. "I always dreamed about what it would exist similar to perchance win one of these someday, but I never thought information technology actually would accept happened. I sing country music. So thank you so much for giving me the chance to win a VMA Honor! I —"

That'southward when Kanye sprang upwards from his front end-row seat, rushed the stage, and took the microphone out of Taylor'southward mitt.

"Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'mma let yous finish," he said. "But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! Ane of the all-time videos of all time!"

The cameras cut immediately to Beyoncé, who was staring at the stage with her mouth afraid in apparent horror. "Oh, Kanye," she mouthed.

MTV via The Box

The oversupply began to boo. Kanye shrugged and handed the microphone dorsum to Taylor as he walked offstage, and Taylor took it and stood silently, lips pursed and body tense, equally the audience erupted into chaos: some booing Kanye, and some continuing on their seats to requite Taylor a standing ovation. And then MTV cut to a prerecorded segment between Eminem and Tracy Morgan.

According to Billboard's oral history of the incident, Kanye returned to his seat during the commercial break, and Pinkish came up to him and chewed him out while the rest of the audience glared at him. MTV ushered him out of the building shortly afterward. Kanye was reportedly shocked that he was asked to leave, and he was seen subsequently that evening at the sceney gastropub Spotted Sus scrofa in New York Urban center's Westward Village.

Backstage, both Taylor and Beyoncé were crying, and producers rushed to attempt to condolement them. It was a fourth dimension-sensitive problem, because Taylor was scheduled to perform during the next segment of the anniversary. And while the first one-half of her number, which sees her singing "You Belong With Me" on a New York Urban center subway car, was prerecorded, the second half — in which she runs out of the subway to perform the final verse on the roof of a taxi — was meant to be alive.

Taylor composed herself and got through her performance with dry eyes and a grin on her face, although her voice is noticeably shakier on the last poesy than it is during the prerecorded segment. Backstage, a producer tactfully noted to Beyoncé that she was likely to be going onstage herself soon (producers knew alee of time who was going to win each honor, although the musicians themselves theoretically didn't), and suggested that it might be nice for her to apply the moment to hand the spotlight back to Taylor.

"I would ordinarily not say anything," Van Toffler, the producer in question, explained to Billboard, "simply I had two crying artists."

When Taylor finished her operation, she wanted to get out with her mother, just Toffler convinced them to stay. ("There was a lot of begging," Toffler says.) Shortly thereafter, Beyoncé won the Video of the Year honour for "Single Ladies," and instead of making her own acceptance oral communication, she invited Taylor onstage to give hers. "I'd like to give Taylor her moment," Beyoncé said.

Later on that night, Kanye posted a public apology to Taylor and all her fans on his blog:

I'1000 sooooo lamentable to taylor swift and her fans and her mom. I spoke to her female parent correct after and she said the same thing my mother would've said. She is very talented! I similar the lyrics about being a cheerleader and she's in the bleachers! i'one thousand in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment!. beyonce's video was the best of this decade! I'g sorry to my fans if I let you guys down! I'm sad to my friends at mtv. I volition apologize to taylor 2mrw. welcome to the real globe! everybody wanna booooo me simply i'thousand a fan of real pop civilisation! No boldness merely we watchin' the show at the crib right now cause … well yous know! i'm even so happy for taylor! Boooyaaawwww! you are very very talented! I gave my awards to outkast when they deserved it over me… that'southward what it is!! i'm non crazy yall, i'm simply real. Deplorable for that! I actually feel bad for taylor and i'grand sincerely sorry! Much respect!!

But the scandal was only get-go.

The immediate backwash was explosive

For months, the 2009 VMAs were all anyone could talk about, which is why Old Navy displayed pumpkins carved in the likeness of Taylor Swift and Kanye West in New York Urban center that Halloween.

Henry S. Dziekan III/Getty Images

In the days post-obit the 2009 VMAs, the media latched onto a major takeaway from the story: Part of the reason that no one would stop talking about Kanye rushing the phase was Twitter.

"Kanye storming the stage was the first time I realized just how powerful Twitter was in driving audiences to Television," Jim Cantiello, who was an MTV News contributor at the time, told Billboard. "If you opened up your timeline that night, your feed was overrun with reactions. If you weren't watching the VMAs and you opened Twitter, it felt like you were missing out on the craziest Television set moment of all time."

Twitter was but three years sometime in 2009 and however evolving as a platform, merely the VMAs incident revealed what information technology could truly excel at: driving conversation during a pop culture moment. It could amplify a scandal equally presently equally information technology occurred and go on people interested in that scandal for days afterward. From then on, Twitter would become 1 of the principal tools that the media used to shape the narrative of news coverage.

If immensely boosting Twitter's profile was all the 2009 VMAs had done, that would nonetheless be enough to immortalize the night, the way the 2000 Grammys were immortalized because J.Lo's clothes that dark was so searched for that it led directly to the creation of Google Images. Only the 2009 VMAs too ready in motion a popular civilisation narrative so compelling that we're still dealing with its fallout.

The firsthand narrative of the scandal was clear-cut and easy to understand: Obviously Kanye, swigging Hennessy on the red carpeting, was in the wrong for rushing the stage. And nineteen-year-old Taylor, who showed up to the red carpet in a Cinderella carriage with her blonde hair in ringlets, was the innocent wronged party.

Video leaked of and then-President Barack Obama opining on a hot mic that "the young lady seemed like a perfectly nice person" while Kanye was "a jackass." Donald Trump called for America to boycott Kanye Westward, proverb, "He couldn't care less most Beyoncé. Information technology was blowhard to become attention."

"What happened to y'all as a child?? Did y'all non go hugged enough??" Kelly Clarkson demanded of Kanye on her blog. She noted, "I think we're all just curious equally to what would brand a grown human proceed national television and make a talented artist, let alone teenager, experience like shit."

"FUCK U KANYE. IT'S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN," tweeted Katy Perry, hereafter Taylor Swift frenemy.

Taylor was obviously and genuinely appalled past what had happened. Merely some members of her team besides appear to accept noticed that the eyes of the scandal were doing only good things for her.

Taffler told Billboard he recalled speaking the day subsequently the awards with Scott Borchetta, at the fourth dimension the CEO of Taylor's so-tape label: "He's like, 'Van, here'southward the thing about information technology: Yesterday most of the country had no idea who Taylor Swift was. Today, Oprah Winfrey sent her flowers this morning and asked if she could talk to her.'"

At the 2010 VMAs, Taylor performed her song "Innocent" with clips of the previous year's scandal playing on the screen behind her. "Thirty-two and still growing up now," she sang, apparently to Kanye. "Who you lot are is not what you did. You're still an innocent."

"I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him," she told New York magazine. "Merely for me it was important to write a song to him."

Reviews were mixed. "Sometimes forgiveness is the sweetest revenge, and it's what she achieved," said one critic. But some other chosen it a "patronizing, condescending sermon."

The 2009 VMAs set up one narrative: Kanye was a corking and Taylor his victim. Simply the 2010 VMAs laid the background for a counternarrative that would turn out to accept some surprising endurance: Was Taylor Swift secretly beingness kind of manipulative with her response? And was America's indelible fascination with the whole thing maybe kind of racist?

"If only West and Swift wouldn't have played then perfectly into their roles: the innocent White girl and the supposedly menacing Black man," wrote Yolanda Sangweni at Essence. But Taylor probably had a good reason for standing to reference the incident, Sangweni ended. "Peradventure taking the victim route sells."

The real surprise was the way the scandal lingered over the next decade

Taylor Swift and Kanye West make prissy at the 2015 Grammys as Kim Kardashian looks on.

Larry Busacca/Getty Images for NARAS

At first, what happened between Kanye W and Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs appeared to be a slice of popular civilization ephemera, a juicy flake of gossip that would rapidly fade abroad. Instead, information technology has lived on to warp the image of both its major participants. Merely Beyoncé, goddess-similar, escaped unscathed — but every time a new Kanye or Taylor scandal emerges, the VMAs scandal seems to lurk in the background, bringing out the ugliest side of everyone involved.

For a few years after the incident, Kanye and Taylor both went out of their manner to appear to publicly bury the hatchet and put the 2009 VMAs backside them. They were seen chatting amicably at public events together. When Kanye won the Video Vanguard Award at the 2015 VMAs, Taylor presented information technology to him, describing him every bit "my friend" and joking, "I'm really happy for you and I'mma permit you finish just Kanye has had one of the greatest careers of all time." Over the course of Kanye'south rambling acceptance speech (he told the audition he had smoked weed beforehand), he apologized to Taylor again for what happened in 2009 and then chastised MTV for hyping upwardly the moment "because it got them more than ratings."

Then in 2016, Kanye released his song "Famous" and the accompanying video, and everything went to hell.

"Famous" is non a vocal with much plausible deniability. It contains a verse that is clearly, explicitly about Taylor Swift and the 2009 VMAs — and makes it clear that Kanye agrees with Scott Borchetta that he perchance did Taylor a favor that nighttime. Raps Kanye:

I feel like me and Taylor might still accept sex

Why? I made that bitch famous

God damn

I made that bowwow famous.

The accompanying video contains footage of Kanye in bed surrounded by lifelike nude figures of various celebrities associated with him, including Taylor. Every bit far as we know, her nude likeness was used in the video without her permission.

As soon as the song dropped, a controversy blew upwards effectually information technology. Kanye said that he'd called Taylor to inquire her permission to release a verse virtually her, and that she'd given him her blessing and said she thought the poesy was funny. Through a spokesperson, Taylor maintained that she hadn't.

"Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single 'Famous' on her Twitter business relationship," Taylor's rep told the New York Times. "She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message." Non only that, the rep said, but "Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, 'I made that [curse] famous.'"

Taylor Swift's 2016 Grammy credence speech.

Shortly afterward, Taylor appeared to reference the controversy in an emotional and highly lauded Grammys acceptance spoken communication. "As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out at that place, there volition be people along the way who will try to undercut your success," she said. "Or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. Just if you just focus on the work … you lot will look around and y'all will know that it was you and the people who dear you lot that put you in that location."

The moment was a solid public relations win for Taylor. It neatly continued the narrative that the 2009 VMAs had put in identify: Taylor was an innocent victim who was just trying to focus on her music and do her work and celebrate her successes, and Kanye was a bully who kept trying to knock her downwards at every turn.

Merely then Kanye's married woman, Kim Kardashian Westward, made a movement that changed the story. Kim turned up the oestrus on the thought that had started to simmer afterwards 2010 and "Innocence" — that Taylor was being manipulative and the turn confronting Kanye was kind of racist — and brought it to a boil.

In July 2016, Kim posted a series of videos on Snapchat that showed Kanye calling Taylor upwards to inquire for her permission to include a poesy referencing her in "Famous." In the video, Kanye clearly reads Taylor the line, "I feel similar me and Taylor might yet have sex," and asks for her approval. All the same, the video is cut together in a way that makes it unclear that Taylor always heard the line "I made that bowwow famous."

"Relationships are more important than punchlines," Kanye tells Taylor, repeatedly saying that he wants her to be happy with the finished song.

"I really appreciate you telling me nearly information technology. That's really nice," Taylor says over the phone. She notes that she was of course already extremely famous before the 2009 VMAs, merely that in that location was no reason for Kanye to know that, and anyhow: "It'due south all very tongue-in-cheek either way." She goes on to muse over the possibility that it would be practiced for her public image to be able to say that she knew almost the poesy ahead of fourth dimension. "If people ask me well-nigh information technology, I remember it would be great for me to be like, 'Look, he called me and told me near the line,'" she says.

Much like with the 2009 VMAs, the resulting fallout was explosive. And ironically, it was Twitter — the platform that first showed its full potential during the 2009 VMAs — that drove the chat.

The hashtag #KimExposedTaylorParty trended for hours. Twitter users victoriously declared Taylor canceled, and they flooded her mentions with serpent emojis.

Taylor scrambled to cover the harm, defensively repeating that her big issue with the song was the word "bowwow," which Kanye had never told her nearly. "You don't get to control someone's emotional reaction to beingness called 'that bowwow' in front of the whole earth," she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram mail service. But her much-praised Grammys speech suddenly put her in a difficult state of affairs, considering the speech had sure made it sound similar her big issue with Kanye was that he was taking credit for her fame — and now it was articulate that she'd given him her blessing to practise so.

The sense that had begun to sally back in 2010 that Taylor was being a piffling bit strategic, a little bit manipulative with the way she was playing the whole Kanye situation, returned with a vengeance — just this fourth dimension, information technology was accompanied past what looked like a smoking gun.

"She wanted to play the victim," Kim said of Taylor on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. "It worked and so well for her starting time fourth dimension."

The 2016 edition of the Taylor-versus-Kanye feud was a kind of remix of the 2009 version, with one major divergence: The social politics of the style people talked well-nigh the scandal had changed. In 2009, what mattered in the public discourse was that Taylor had washed nothing incorrect and that Kanye was rude to her. Readings of the scandal that analyzed its racial politics, like Yolanda Sangweni's at Essence, were largely siloed to black media.

But in 2016, mainstream media began to talk nigh whether the whole 2009 VMAs scandal had stuck as hard as information technology did because it played then neatly into the old racist American nightmare of the aggressive black man menacing a virginal blonde white daughter.

Vice looked back at Taylor's 2009 VMA win as "blackness excellence thwarted by white mediocrity once again" (though it's worth noting again here that Beyoncé ended up winning the more prestigious award at the cease of the night, and then Taylor didn't so much thwart Beyoncé'south undisputed excellence as have home a alleviation prize). Vice as well noted the iconography of the moment: "Taylor, the innocent white daughter, and Kanye, the bullying black demon."

And as the racial politics of the 2009 incident came in for new analysis, then did its gender politics. Wasn't Kanye's dismissal of Taylor's artistry rooted in a knee-jerk refusal to allow that fine art made for teenage girls can be worthwhile? Wasn't the public in 2016 taking a perverse glee in tearing Taylor downwardly in part because she was a woman who fabricated art for other women?

"Swift's white victimhood complex and Kanye'southward gross misogyny are fueling this drama, and no one is a winner," concluded Elle.

The 2009 VMAs scandal has endured equally long as it has because it's a perfect 21st-century morality tale

Kanye W and Taylor Swift at the 2015 VMAs.

Larry Busacca/MTV1415/Getty Images

Elle was correct. Ten years after the VMAs, neither Taylor nor Kanye has managed to definitively win the feud. Instead, the rest of us detect ourselves revisiting the story of their onstage see at the 2009 VMAs over and over, reinscribing it with new meaning every fourth dimension either Taylor or Kanye becomes enmeshed in a new controversy.

While Kim's management of the 2016 "Taylor exposed" scandal briefly netted Kanye a win, the goodwill he accrued from it didn't terminal for long. Before the twelvemonth was out, he was aligning himself with a newly elected Donald Trump to widespread outrage, prompting yet some other reevaluation of his behavior at the 2009 VMAs.

"Everything is darker now," wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates of Kanye's legacy as Kanye embraced Trumpism. And equally a consequence, Coates described himself as forced to reckon with the idea that "the bumrushing of Taylor Swift was not solely righteous acrimony, but was something more spastic and troubling," a moment that should have foreshadowed Kanye's turn toward lending his platform and cultural power to Trump without appearing to empathize how damaging Trump'southward policies could be to blackness Americans.

Meanwhile, public criticism of Taylor was and then intense that she disappeared from public view for a full year after Kim released those videos. When she reemerged to release Reputation in 2017, she was roundly denounced for continuing to play the victim in her new songs, and when she transitioned this year to the Lover era, gossip pages held a flourishing debate over whether she was still, in Kim'southward words, "playing the victim."

"She far from plays the victim," People magazine alleged upon Lover's release in Baronial. But: "Everyone knows she's playing the victim," said Page Vi in June of Taylor'due south much-publicized spat with Scooter Braun — which is in itself a spinoff of the Kanye feud, because the reason Taylor hates Braun is that he was Kanye'southward manager when Kanye released "Famous."

We seem to be endlessly fascinated by this moment in fourth dimension, and we probably will exist for as long as either Taylor Swift or Kanye West is famous. And that'south considering it tells us an enormous amount about why they are so famous.

When we talk virtually celebrities, we are never only talking about celebrities. Celebrities are bodies onto whom we as a culture project our fantasies, our fears, and our dreams. Taylor Swift and Kanye W are equally famous as they are in part because they are very skilful at letting u.s. project different ideas on to them — virtually white femininity and blackness masculinity, almost celebrity that feels relatable and celebrity that feels aspirational, virtually whose voices we value and when and why. The 2009 VMAs were a moment in which all those ideas came screaming out at us.

Encapsulated in that iconic "I'mma permit you cease" speech are America'due south ideas about race, nigh gender, well-nigh wealth, most what kind of music we are allowed to applaud, nigh who gets to win and why, nigh whom we are willing to love and why. Information technology'south all in that location, pressed and squeezed into those 60 breathless seconds, and every time we retell the story, nosotros find new ways to tease out what the moment and its fallout say about us equally a civilisation. It'due south a perfect morality tale for the 21st century, and it's all told in the linguistic communication of glory.

Plus, tin can you lot believe Kanye just stormed the stage similar that? Who does that?

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Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/26/20828559/taylor-swift-kanye-west-2009-mtv-vmas-explained

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