music

Never let it be said that Kim Kardashian doesn’t know how to get the maximum amount of attention. She’s the master of “getting attention.” It is basically her only real skill. She can’t dance, sing, write, have an original thought, model or style herself. But she’s good at getting attention. First off, GQ released their full editorial and interview with Kim and the whole thing is crazy. The editorial is full-on porn and very NSFW, and you can see GQ’s full package here. As for the interview… Kim talks and talks and talks. But the conversation about Taylor Swift is amazing. Kim tells her version of events for the controversy around Kanye’s lyric: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why, I made that bitch famous / God damn / I made that bitch famous.” Kanye maintained from the very beginning that he sought and received Taylor’s approval for that lyric. Team Swifty always claimed that Kanye is a horrible monster who was once again trying to destroy Taylor. Kim’s version is AMAZING. Even more amazing? GQ got Taylor’s people to make an absolutely bonkers comment too!! Kim says Taylor’s deep emotional wound is nonsense—okay, she says it’s a lie—and that there’s video proof, because a videographer was actually filming their phone call. Why? Because Kim’s husband commissions videographers to film everything when he’s recording an album, for posterity (and possibly, one day, a documentary). And this is where it gets sticky. “She totally approved that,” Kim says, shaking her head in annoyance. “She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn’t. I swear, my husband gets so much sh-t for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved.” Kim is on a roll now, speaking faster and more animatedly than at any other point during our time together. “What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?” Let’s stipulate here that Kim Kardashian West is not the kind of person who forgets that the tape-recorder light is blinking. But just because a rant is carefully chosen for its audience doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine. Swift, Kim insists, “totally gave the okay. Rick Rubin was there. So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew. I mean, he’s called me a bitch in his songs. That’s just, like, what they say. I never once think, [gasping] ‘What a derogatory word! How dare he?’ Not in a million years. I don’t know why she just, you know, flipped all of a sudden.… It was funny because [on the call with Kanye, Taylor] said, ‘When I get on the Grammy red carpet, all the media is going to think that I’m so against this, and I’ll just laugh and say, ‘The joke’s on you, guys. I was in on it the whole time.’ And I’m like, wait, but [in] your Grammy speech, you completely dissed my husband just to play the victim again.” Were they in touch after that? “No. Maybe an attorney’s letter she sent saying, ‘Don’t ever let that footage come out of me saying that. Destroy it.’ ” She sent one? “Yeah.” I ask Kim how Taylor Swift’s people could have known about the footage, if Swift didn’t even realize she was being recorded in the first place. Kim tells me she isn’t sure, but she thinks someone from Team Kanye might have called someone from Team Taylor. “And then they sent an attorney’s letter like, ‘Don’t you dare do anything with that footage,’ and asking us to destroy it.” She pauses. “When you shoot something, you don’t stop every two seconds and be like, ‘Oh wait, we’re shooting this for my documentary.’ You just film everything, and whatever makes the edit, then you see, then you send out releases. It’s like what we do for our show.” GQ later contacted Kanye’s reps to inquire about the possible video footage and threat of legal action from Swift’s team. While Team Kanye asserted that Kanye and Taylor’s conversation had been filmed and that they had heard from her lawyers, they declined to provide further proof. A spokesperson for Taylor Swift declined to directly answer questions seeking clarification on the matter and instead provided the following statement, printed here in radiant completeness: “Taylor does not hold anything against Kim Kardashian as she recognizes the pressure Kim must be under and that she is only repeating what she has been told by Kanye West. However, that does not change the fact that much of what Kim is saying is incorrect. Kanye West and Taylor only spoke once on the phone while she was on vacation with her family in January of 2016 and they have never spoken since. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do. Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the term ‘that bitch’ in referencing her. A song cannot be approved if it was never heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian’s claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.” [From GQ] First let me say… Kanye and Kim do need to stop talking about this. Everyone else has moved on. I even believe the Kanye-version of events and I think he needs to move on. But the details provided here are just… incredible. Taylor’s lawyers trying to shut down footage of her approval of the lyrics, her manipulation of the situation to make it seem like Kanye was “humiliating” her again, and that epic clarification from her people? Bonkers. Oh, and the rest of the GQ interview is rather glorious. This is one of my new favorite Kim quotes: “All my friends and my sisters say, ‘You guys are so perfect for each other. There’s no one that would want to sit in your closet for hours with you and try on clothes.’” That’s probably true. GQ also mocks Kim’s “empire” in many ways, but even they have to admit that her empire (based on superficiality and vapidity) is making major bank. Kim also says she’s voting for Hillary, which we knew already. Photos courtesy of Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/GQ.