Just In: The Original Taylor Swift Lyric in Kanye West’s “Famous” Was Even More Controversial as a leaked demo of “Famous” surfaced yesterday.

 

In February, The New York Times reported that Kanye West was going about finishing The Life of Pablo in an unprecedented way. This included releasing still-in-flux song titles on Twitter and holding listening sessions for friends and record label reps. One of these led to a Reddit thread hinting that West would be insulting Taylor Swift in the song “Famous.” It even quoted lyrics from an early version of the song: “I feel like Taylor Swift still owe me sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”

The line had changed to the current lyrics (“I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex”) by the time West performed the song at Madison Square Garden one day after the Reddit user posted that thread, but a leaked demo of the song that dropped on YouTube and Soundcloud (it has since been taken down) yesterday reveals that the original version of the lyric did, in fact, exist.

The verse also continued, “Amber Rose owe me sex” (a reference to West’s ex-girlfriend), “I made that bitch famous, not really but somewhat famous.” The current version repeats “I made that bitch famous” twice instead of hedging with that second part.

What happened after that set off the feud of the year. On February 11, TMZ reported that West had called Swift to get her approval for the song. Her rep told People that he hadn’t called, but rather reached out on Twitter. In June, Kim Kardashian West gave an interview to GQ saying the calls not only happened; they had been filmed, and then she released edited versions of West calling Swift on Snapchat.

In the portion of the call Kardashian West released, West does ask Swift for approval of the line “I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex” (as opposed to the missing “that bitch” approval to which Swift took umbrage). She calls it “provocative” and says “Go with whatever version of the line you want; it’s obviously very tongue-in-cheek either way.” It’s unclear if she heard the original version of the line, or another altered version. West has not gone into detail about when he changed the lyric. Swift’s spokesperson was unavailable for comment for this article.

Meanwhile, when asked about being included in “Famous” in June, and West often being credited for her rise to fame, Rose told The Daily Beast, “Everything I’ve done [since dating him] is my own doing, and I’ve worked my fucking ass off for everything . . . [T]hey always want to diminish my accomplishments and put them on someone else when I work really hard.”

When reached, a rep for Rose did not have a comment.