Reply to Kim kardashian just released video of Taylor Swift's convo on her snapchat

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[quote=Anonymous]From The New York Times article:

[quote]Ms. Swift and Mr. West couldn’t be more different: Ms. Swift is a covert operator, Mr. West a namer of names. Ms. Swift is as careful a crafter of narrative, both in song and in life, as anyone in pop. Mr. West shoots from the hip; it’s the source of much of his charm.

Throughout this battle, each has accused the other of dishonesty. There is a fundamental layer of falseness and contrivance to all public images: Celebrity culture relies upon that layer not being disrupted. Part of the power of the video Ms. Kardashian West released is it appeared to show that Ms. Swift’s public presentation and private machinations were at odds. The Ms. Swift in those video clips is self-aware — “I’m, like, this close to overexposure,” she said — in a way she often isn’t in public, and she is also willing to disrupt her image in unexpected ways.

But her stern response to the song’s release served as a reassertion of the old order. It also extended a narrative in which Mr. West is painted as the predator and Ms. Swift as the prey, a story with uncomfortable racial overtones.

In the excerpts, though, Mr. West is solicitous and warm. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he says, enunciating each word of the lyric carefully, with Ms. Swift on speakerphone. Rhythmically, it sounds like perhaps he’s workshopping one of two options with her. Later, he says: “I want things that make you feel good. I don’t want to do rap that makes people feel bad.” (The clips are short and choppy, and clearly excerpts. On Twitter in February, Mr. West said the call with Ms. Swift had been an hour long.)

“I just really appreciate it,” Ms. Swift said. “I never would have expected you to tell me about a line in your song.”

“Relationships,” Mr. West tells her, “are more important than punch lines.”

Seeking permission for a lyric is a rather extraordinary step, especially for Mr. West, whose loose tongue is his greatest asset. Ms. Swift, by contrast, has historically avoided identifying the subjects of her songs, though after the 2009 V.M.A.s, Ms. Swift released the rather patronizing “Innocent” — including the words “Who you are is not what you did/ You’re still an innocent” — which she described in a 2010 interview with MTV as not a song about Mr. West but one “to” him. (It also seems unlikely that she ran “Dear John,” a song widely believed to be about John Mayer, to whom Ms. Swift was romantically linked, and one of the most effective and ruthless eviscerations of a fellow celebrity in pop history, past Mr. Mayer for approval.)

Given the seemingly genial nature of the conversation the two had, what exactly so agitated Ms. Swift remains somewhat unclear. The release of the call footage is an obvious violation of trust, and brings up possible legal issues. (The legality of recording phone calls varies from state to state; a representative for Mr. West did not respond to an inquiry about where the singer had been at the time of the phone call.) In an interview with GQ, released last month, Ms. Kardashian West mentioned that Ms. Swift’s legal team was aware of the recorded conversation “and then they sent an attorney’s letter like, ‘Don’t you dare do anything with that footage,’ and asking us to destroy it.”

The statement put out by Ms. Swift’s representative at the time of the release of “Famous” said that Ms. Swift had “cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.” It also said, “Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’ ” Indeed, the leaked video does not show Mr. West asking about that line.

And so, if this conflagration is indeed turning on the interpretation of that word, then what may be at play is a contextual misread, or perhaps a clash of value systems. Mr. West comes from the world of hip-hop, where use of the term to refer to women can be so pervasive as to dull its pejorative meaning. In 2012, Mr. West unveiled a song called “Perfect Bitch” — it was about Ms. Kardashian West, then his girlfriend. But though it has become a catchall term, it still carries undeniable historical baggage.[/quote]

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/arts/music/taylor-swift-kim-kardashian.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0[/url]

Later in the call Swift does talk about the "famous" part of the lyric.  It does seem like everything hinges on the word "bitch," not famous.  I agree with the above take on things that Kanye was surprisingly solicitous of Swift on the phone and they really sounded like friends.  Maybe Swift was doing something I do, too, which is sounding more open to something than I really am for the purpose of trying to preserve the peace.  But then it's not Kanye's fault that he came out of the conversation with a different understanding than Swift intended.  She's got to take responsibility for what she said, and stop painting Kanye as the evil black man who took advantage of her.[/quote]

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