What if Kanye West has been right all along?
When his song "Famous" was released, he said he had singer Taylor Swift's blessing. We didn't believe him. After all, in that song, he calls former nemesis Swift a derogatory name, suggests the two might kick it and brags he was the one who made her famous (you know, way back in 2009 when he hijacked her award acceptance). Why would she agree to such slights?
And besides, she gave the impression that she was offended by the song and didn't approve of it prior to its release. She said as much in her pointed February Grammy speech: "I want to say to the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going, you will look around and you will know it was you and the people who love you who put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world."
Well, now -- through leaked videos on wife Kim Kardashian's Snapchat -- West has substantiated that he did, in fact, seek Taylor's support and informed her of at least some of the lyrics. And judging by the recording, she was in favor of it saying, "I mean it's like a compliment, kind of." She called Kanye "sweet," thanked him for sending flowers and said, "Like, the heads up is like, so nice. [inaudible] ... even asking or seeing if I would be OK with it and I just really appreciate it. Like I would never expect you to like tell me about a line in one of your songs."
Taylor now contends she did not hear the song in advance and didn't know he'd be calling her a nasty name: "You don't get to control someone's emotional response to being called 'that b****' in front of the entire world. ... Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination."
Still, the bottom line remains: Kanye did give her a (partial?) heads up. He was (at least somewhat?) honest.
Which terrifies us! What if all the ridiculousness Kanye West had been rambling over the years is really true?
For example:
• "I'm a designer. A musician. A manager. The media try to dishumanize [sic] people who believe in themselves." What if Kanye is correct and "dishumanize" is an actual word?
• "The Bible had 20, 30, 40, 50 characters in it. You don't think that I would be one of the characters of today's modern Bible?" And here we remember reading about 144,000 mentioned in the Book of Revelation alone, but if Kanye says it, it must be so. As for him being one of modern's Bible's characters, we've got it! The plague of swarming locusts!
• "Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud nonreader of books." OK, so we never doubted the accuracy of this Kanye quote. Moving on.
• "I hate when I'm on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle." We believe this water bottle tweet now. But given Kanye's talk, we always figured the bottles littered around him were of a stiffer nature.
• "And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president." We giggled when he said it at last year's MTV Video Music Awards, but stranger political things have happened. Heck, stranger political things are happening right now.
• "My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live." Perhaps that will be the worst pain he'll ever know? But the legal ramifications of this situation could prove more excruciating.
Swift, who got wind of this video footage prior to its release and had lawyers send Kanye a threatening letter months ago -- could sue him for secretly recording her from a California studio (a two-party consent state) without permission, a felony offense.
Now that will really be "dishumanizing."
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Spin Cycle is a smirk at pop culture. You can hear Jennifer on Little Rock's KURB-FM, B98.5 (B98.com), from 5:30-9 a.m. Monday through Friday.
Style on 07/24/2016