Kanye West Doubles Down On His Promise To Get Taylor Swift Her Masters Back: She ‘Deserves That’

Kanye West, 43, is following up on his promise to help Taylor Swift, 30 — whom he’s had drama with since 2009 — take her masters back! The rapper insisted that he’s “going to personally” see this mission through in a tweet on Sept. 18, which he addressed again in an interview with Billboard published five days later. “All artists need to be free and own their rights. Taylor Swift deserves that, just like everyone else,” Kanye told the music outlet.

Kanye was also asked if he’s talked with Scooter Braun, just like he promised to do in his original tweet. The celebrity manager’s company, Ithaca Holdings, purchased Big Machine Label Group in a reported $300 million deal in June of 2019 — the same label that owned the masters (AKA, the rights) to her first six albums. Taylor infamously wrote that it was her “worst case scenario” for Scooter to own her masters, whom she described as an “incessant, manipulative bully” in a Tumblr post. However, Kanye was feeling optimistic that all would be resolved.

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1307051810037927937

“As I mentioned before, Scooter Braun is a friend and we’ll be having that discussion,” the Yeezy boss told Billboard, reiterating what he said about Scooter being a “CLOSE FAMILY FRIEND” in his original tweet. And that was that! Kanye is currently on a mission to help all music artists achieve independence and is in a similar boat as Taylor, as he seeks the “rights to his master recordings back from Universal Music Group,” according to Billboard.

It’s quite a surprise to see Kanye essentially declaring that he’s Team Taylor, given that their beef spans over a decade. It all started when Kanye infamously interrupted Taylor at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards as the then 19-year-old singer accepted her award for “Best Female Video,” which Kanye believed should have gone towards Beyoncé instead. Although Kanye eventually apologized and the incident was buried, a new scandal erupted after Kanye dropped his song “Famous” in 2016 with this controversial line: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b–ch famous.” Taylor wasn’t too happy about being called a “b–ch.”

Kim Kardashian then caused an uproar after releasing footage of Kanye on the phone with Taylor, who could be heard approving of the “might still have sex joke.” This sparked a hate campaign against Taylor, as people threw snake emojis at the pop star. However, Taylor’s reputation was cleared in March of 2020, when an alleged audio clip of the full phone call dropped and seemed to prove that Kanye didn’t actually ask permission to call Taylor “that b–ch” in his song (which is what she had actually taken issue with all along).