Ye Won't Stop Trolling Swift, Who Gets Her Revenge

Her Tortured Poets Department keeps West's Vultures 2 from top spot, breaking his No. 1 streak
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 12, 2024 6:12 AM CDT
Ye Won't Stop Trolling Swift, Who Gets Her Revenge
In this Sept. 13, 2009, file photo, singer Kanye West takes the microphone from singer Taylor Swift as she accepts the best female video award during the MTV Video Music Awards in New York.   (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, File)

Kanye West has had 11 consecutive No. 1 albums, and was going for 12, but an old nemesis has just broken his streak. Us Weekly reports that Vultures 2, Ye's new album with Ty Dolla $ign, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it his 13th album to reach the top two spots. So who couldn't the 47-year-old rapper knock out of the No. 1 spot? None other than Taylor Swift, whose The Tortured Poets Department is now in its 14th week at the top, per Billboard's gauge.

TMZ points out the pair's history, noting that Kanye has "been a thorn in [Swift's] side" for the past 15 years, starting in 2009, when West stormed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards after Swift won for best female video, interrupted Swift's acceptance speech, and made it clear he thought Beyonce should've won. Although the two allegedly made their peace later on, West then riffed on Swift in his 2016 song "Famous," including the lyric: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that b---- famous."

West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian then released an edited recording that supposedly included Swift conceding she'd given the OK for that lyric (she hadn't, per TMZ). More recently, Ye rapped about Swift and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, on "Lifestyle," a track from Vultures 2, with the lyric, "I twist my Taylor spliffs tight at the end like Travis Kelce." Kelce's dad, Ed Kelce, isn't happy about the reference, per Page Six. "Mental illness on full display," the elder Kelce wrote on social media last week, along with posting a Daily Mail article about West's mention of Swift and his son. (More Taylor Swift stories.)

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