In 2016, Kanye West infamously name-dropped Taylor Swift on “Famous” from his The Life of Pablo album.
Today (Dec. 6), the singer reflected on the incident during her interview with TIME, which named her 2023’s Person of the Year. Swift looked back on her tumultuous journey, particularly her feud with Kim Kardashian and West.
“Make no mistake, my career was taken away from me,” she revealed. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.”
When “Famous” first came out, the musician’s representative initially stated she was unaware of the specific lyric, “I made that b**ch famous.” Kardashian countered, claiming Swift approved the song’s content, and allegedly released snippets of the conversation between the “Bad Blood” artist and West.
Swift described the incident as a “fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.”
The backlash led Swift to retreat from the public, she claimed. “I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls… I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard,” the singer shared.
Notably, The Life of Pablo debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart upon its release. The 20-track project boasted features from Rihanna, Young Thug, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Chris Brown, and Ty Dolla Sign, among others. It went platinum for the third time in 2022.
Meanwhile, Swift dropped her highly anticipated LP, Midnights, that same year. On the standout track “Vigilante S**t,” fans speculated the pop star shaded West and his divorce from Kardashian.
“Now she gets the house, gets the kids, gets the pride/ Picture me, thick as thieves with your ex-wife,” the lyrics read. “And she looks so pretty/ Driving in your Benz/ Lately, she’s been dressin’ for revenge.”
