Kim Kardashian Claims There's Video Proof Of Taylor Swift Approving Kanye West's 'Famous' Lyrics. Says Singer's Attorney Sent Letter Requesting It Not Be Released

Here's an excerpt from Kim Kardashian's GQ cover story. She goes into detail about the controversy that erupted between her husband, Kanye West, and Taylor Swift when he mentioned the singer in the song "Famous" off of his "The Life of Pablo" album.

Kim didn't fly all the way to Italy to stand next to a wall of flowers inside a 16th-century military fortification just to marry some guy from Chicago. She signed on to marry Kanye West, the volatile creative genius, a man famous for telling very vivid stories about his sex life in rhyme. She did that on purpose.

Which brings us to the time he rapped about Taylor Swift.

I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, West muses in the first verse of his The Life of Pablo track “Famous.” Why? I made that bitch famous.

Prior to Pablo, West and Swift appeared to have caulked up the rift in their famously fraught professional relationship. She presented him with an award at the MTV VMAs last summer. He sent her a large cube of flowers. Things remained harmonious for almost a full half year, until the release of “Famous.”

Following an Internet-borne convulsion about the song's content, West issued a series of tweets in which he stated he “called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line,” that she “thought it was funny,” “gave her blessings,” and even “came up with” the lyric. A representative for Swift quickly released a statement crisply denying West's claim: “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’ ” A day after the album's release, Swift accepted the Grammy for album of the year for 1989, and one portion of her speech—“I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments, or your fame...”—was widely interpreted as a dig at West.

Kanye and Taylor (or Kanye and Taylor's rep) may both be telling the truth here—as they see it. Maybe the duo talked “sex” but not “bitch.” Maybe he misinterpreted her noncommittal politeness as implicit accord. Maybe they both hung up pleased they were finally on the same page.

But 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 shit 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.”