Kanye West Calls Taylor Swift ‘Fake Ass’ in ‘SNL’ Leaked Rant
Kanye West seemed to have had a bit of a meltdown while backstage at NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend. According to Page Six, he threatened to walk off the show, and on Wednesday, Page Six posted audio apparently recorded at the time.
“Look at that shit, they took my fucking stage off a ‘SNL’ without asking me. Now I’m bummed. That and Taylor Swift, fake ass,” West is heard saying. His song, “Famous,” from The Life of Pablo contains lyrics claiming he made “that bitch famous.” Swift dismissed his claims in her Grammy acceptance speech on Monday.
While it’s not clear from the tape who is being addressed, Page Six reports that he was going off on the production staff. A source connected to Kanye West denies that West yelled at ‘SNL’ staff. “This audio was secretly recorded while he was venting his frustration in a private moment with his team,” the source tells Rolling Stone. “He found out his stage design was changed and taken apart under the direction of the show’s lighting director without anyone’s approval.”
In the audio tape, he also appears to reference walking out on the set in the audio obtained. “Now I ain’t gonna do this, we’re breaking the motherfucking internet,” he said. “I went through six years of this fucking shit. Let’s get to it, bro. Let’s get to it, bro.”
West’s infamous ego then seems to take over during the tirade. “Are they fucking crazy, bro? By 50 percent. Stanley Kubrick, Apostle Paul, Picasso… fucking Picasso and Escobar. By 50 percent, more influential than any other human being.
“Don’t fuck with me. Don’t fuck with me. Don’t fuck with me,” he continues. “By 50 percent, dead or alive, by 50 percent for the next thousand years. Stanley Kubrick. Ye.”
The source says that West’s frustration was justified. “He spent an entire day rehearsing and a lot of hard work into the performance. Dramatic set changes were made 30 minutes before going live. It should be understandable why he was upset after being completely blindsided.”
Despite the rant, West did perform on the show last Saturday. The source says that after everything was fixed and following West’s performance, “Kanye was seen hugging Lorne Michaels just before the goodnights and he stayed afterwards to chat with the staff and the cast, and thanked the producers on his way out the door.”
His recent tweets also seem to indicate he’s trying to be more humble. “Man, I was thinking about when I commented on the idea of ‘taking the rap throne’,” he wrote in a series of tweets on Wednesday, which were posted prior to the Page Six story being published. He stated his former stance was “a dated mentality” and acknowledged that “every rapper is somebody’s favorite” and that “everybody has something they do best.”
He addressed the importance of admitting his mistake with the rap boast. “A wise man should be humble enough to admit when he’s wrong and change his mind based on new information,” he wrote, later concluding that “My number one enemy has been my ego… there is only one throne and that’s God’s.”