Taylor Swift seemed to take aim at Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, with an updated title for a song from her album “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Taylor Nation announced the release of a digital album Thursday featuring a mash up of the song, “thanK you aIMee” and 2010 hit “Mean” — which was performed by Swift in Wembley in June as part of her London Eras Tour.
The song’s original title “thanK you aIMee,” with the letters K I and M capitalized, is widely considered to be one of the megastar’s most overt diss tracks, targeting Kim Kardashian following a rumored yearslong feud. But the Taylor Nation announcement instead highlighted the letters Y and E in the song’s title — seemingly calling out Ye.
Swift and West’s back-and-forth can be traced back to 2010, when the rapper snatched the microphone from Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards as she was accepting the “Best Female Video” award.
The situation came to a head following the controversy surrounding West’s lyrics about Swift in his song “Famous.” Swift claimed she was unaware that West would refer to her as “that b—-” in his song. But West’s wife at the time, Kim Kardashian, shared a short and edited video in 2016 of West apparently speaking to Swift and getting her approval for the song.
A representative for Swift said at the time that the rapper did not call her for approval, but to ask her to release the song on her Twitter.
“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 b—h famous’,” the representative said.
In 2020, the 25-minute video of the call between Swift and West was leaked and it appeared to back up the pop star’s story.
Swift performed the “thank You aimEe” and “Mean” mash up for a packed Wembley Stadium in June. She started by thanking the audience for supporting her performance on the iconic stage.
“But on the other hand, it really makes me think about how every time somebody talks s***, it just makes me work even harder and it makes me that much tougher,” she said. “So, it also makes me incredibly thankful for those people.”
