Controversy at the Grammys: Jay-Z vs. Taylor Swift

Controversy at the Grammys: Jay-Z vs. Taylor Swift. Some of you are going to go home tonight and feel like you’ve been robbed, some of you made it raw, some of you don’t belong in the category.

By Megan Sauer

They’re going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. You don’t let those people sidetrack you.

Someday when you get where you’re going, you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there.

Jay-Z humiliating Taylor Swift on live air, and it seems he just might regret it very soon. So, what exactly happened?

The Brooklyn-born rapper made his speech at Sunday night’s Grammys when he was honored with the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award for his contribution to the music industry.

With his 12-year-old daughter Blue Ivy standing on stage beside him and Beyonce looking on from their table in the audience, dressed in just off the catwalk Louis Vuitton by Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z spoke about the importance of dreams, drive, and ambition before referencing his wife of 14 years.

“I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year, so even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work.”

The camera then cut to Beyonce looking slightly apprehensive in the audience.

Viewers were quick to speculate if he was taking aim at Taylor with his remarks, who has received 52 Grammy nominations and won 14, four of which have been Album of the Year. Conversely, Beyonce has been nominated for 88 competitive Grammy Awards, six times for Album of the Year.

Jay-Z has also been nominated for 88 competitive Grammy Awards, winning 24 of them like his wife.

Six of his nominations have been for Album of the Year. Taking to X, formerly Twitter, during Jay-Z’s speech, viewers compared his rant to Kanye’s, while one fan noted that men have tried to pit Beyonce and Taylor against one another, noting, “So Jay-Z and Kanye West are best mates again.

At least she was able to finish this time. It’s funny, Taylor Swift and Beyonce literally show up for each other. It is toxic masculinity that perpetuates the wicked female narrative. #Grammys.”

Others added, “Jay-Z is Emma, let you finish away from being Kanye. #Grammys.” “Jay-Z really just pulled a Kanye. This acceptance speech is awkward.” “Beyonce having Taylor and Kanye flashback during Jay-Z’s #Grammy speech.” In any case, Beyonce and Taylor have been pitted against each other for 15 years.

Last year, the pair continued to show each other’s support as they attended the premieres for each other’s concert tour films.

Yet the narrative that they are feuding has still prevailed, despite Taylor insisting that she is actively rejecting it. Taylor told Time Magazine last year, “Beyonce is the most precious gem of a person, warm and open and funny, and she’s such a great disruptor of Music Industry Norms.

She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices. There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyonce.

Clearly, it’s very lucrative for the media and Stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.

I think it’s radical and beautiful that the two of us actively reject that conversation. I know we’ve evolved past that conversation because she and I are trying to do bigger things elsewhere.”

In Jay-Z’s Grammy speech, he said the awards were subjective but nice to win. At the start of his speech, he joked that his Grammy Awards used to be used as sippy cups for Blue Ivy, but now she has her own Grammys.

He said the 12-year-old won her first Grammy aged nine, with a writing credit for “Brown Skin Girl,” which won in 2021 for her mother. Jay-Z continued, “How far we’ve come from Will Smith and Jazzy Jeff winning their first Grammy in ’89 and boycotting because it wasn’t televised, and then they went to the hotel and watched the Grammys. I didn’t even understand it wasn’t a great boycott.”

He said that he then did a similar thing but then 98. “I took a page out of their book. I was nominated for best rap album and DMX had dropped two albums that year, they both were number one, shout out to DMX, and he wasn’t nominated at all.

So I boycotted and I watched the Grammys. I’m just saying we want y’all to get it right, we love y’all, we love y’all, we love y’all, we want y’all to get it right, at least get it close to right.”

Meanwhile, the views Alysa Farah Griffin criticized the move for taking away from Swift’s historic evening that saw her become the first person in history to win four Album of the Year honors.

“This is a longstanding thing. I think the country has never gotten over the fact that Beyonce didn’t win Album of the Year for ‘I Am… Sasha Fierce,’ and this goes back to the Taylor drama. She won for ‘Fearless’ that year.

Objectively, I can say, I think Beyonce should have won for ‘I Am… Sasha Fierce,'” Griffin said on “M Day” during a hot topic about the ceremony, going on to say that she didn’t love portions of Jay-Z’s speech.

“I just don’t like it. It feels like taking away from artists who are winning that night.

Beyonce has been such a support system to Taylor Swift. She showed up to the opening of her tour movie, Taylor went to hers, and it felt like it was taking away from her making history that night by winning the most Album of the Year,” Griffin continued, referencing Swift’s eventual Album of the Year victory for “midnights.”

Panelist Sarah Haines pointed out, though, that Beyonce wasn’t in that category this year before legal expert Sunny Hostin defended Jay-Z for sticking up for his spouse.

“I like that he had the courage to say it to his wife. I like when a couple who’s had a tumultuous relationship at times, you see that longevity, you see that love and see them stick up for each other. I like that part of it. I don’t know that it makes sense that Beyonce has so many awards and never won Album of the Year. ‘Renaissance’ was just an incredible moment for everyone, for American culture,” she observed.

“I think there’s some sort of discrepancy there in terms of who this country decides is the Pop Princess or who this country makes the determination for sometimes. I don’t think the country gets it right.”

During CBS’s Grammy ceremony, Jay-Z spoke out against the Recording Academy’s voting history as he spoke on behalf of receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award. “I’m just saying we want y’all to get it right,” the rapper said.

“We love y’all, at least get it close to right. And obviously it’s subjective, y’all don’t get to clap at everything. Obviously it’s subjective because it’s music and it’s opinion-based, but some things, you know.

In any case, Jay-Z is not the first artist to attack Taylor Swift while in defense of Beyonce. Almost 15 years ago, there came a VMA moment that will live forever in infamy. It was the moment in which Kanye West stormed the VMA stage as Taylor Swift attempted to accept her award for Best Video by a Female Artist. Kanye West arrived on the red carpet of the 2009 VMAs clutching a bottle of Hennessy.

In pictures of the red carpet, you can see the level in the bottle gradually dropping as he makes his way up the carpet and drinks more and more. Kanye wasn’t performing that night, but he was nominated in multiple categories and he was seated in the front row.

According to Billboard’s oral history of the evening, he passed the bottle around to fellow celebrities as he waited for the show to start.

Taylor Swift arrived on the red carpet in a fanciful glass pumpkin-shaped Cinderella coach, wearing a glittering silver gown. She was in the process of crossing over from the country music scene to mainstream pop, and for the first time, she’d been invited to perform at the VMAs to sing “You Belong With Me.”

She was also up for an award for the “You Belong With Me” video. The coach and gown were a deliberate reference; Taylor was Cinderella, and the VMAs were the ball at which she could make her entrance into the world of pop music.

Taylor was nominated in only one category, Best Video by a Female Artist. Her big competition was Beyonce, whose video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” was one of the most acclaimed of the year. But Beyonce was also up for the far more prestigious Video of the Year award, for which Taylor was not nominated.

So when Taylor won the Best Female Video award before the ceremony had even reached its first commercial break, most people didn’t interpret her win as Taylor definitively beating Beyonce. It was more likely that Beyonce would get her moment later in the night. But Kanye disagreed, and here’s what happened: Taylor took the stage in her silver Cinderella gown to accept her award from Shakira.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “I always dreamed about what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never thought it actually would have happened. I sing country music, so thank you so much for giving me the chance to win a VMA award.”

That’s when Kanye sprang up from his front-row seat, rushed the stage, and took the microphone out of Taylor’s hand. “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!” The cameras cut immediately to Beyonce, who was staring at the stage with her mouth agape in apparent horror. “Oh, Kanye,” she mouthed.

According to Billboard’s oral history of the incident, Kanye returned to his seat during the commercial break, and Pink came up to him and chewed him out, while the rest of the audience glared at him. MTV ushered him out of the building shortly afterward. Kanye was reportedly shocked that he was asked to leave, and he was seen later that evening at the gastro pub Spotted Pig in New York City’s West Village. Backstage, both Taylor and Beyonce were crying, and producers rushed to try to comfort them.

It was a time-sensitive problem because Taylor was scheduled to perform during the next segment of the ceremony, and while the first half of her number, which sees her singing “You Belong With Me” on a New York City subway car, was pre-recorded, the second half, in which she runs out of the subway to perform the final verse on the roof of a taxi, was meant to be live.

Taylor composed herself and got through her performance with dry eyes and a smile on her face, although her voice is noticeably shakier in the final verse than it is during the pre-recorded segment. Backstage, a producer tactfully noted to Beyonce that she was likely to be going on stage herself soon.

Producers knew ahead of time who was going to win each award, although the musicians themselves theoretically didn’t, and suggested that it might be nice for her to use the moment to hand the spotlight back to Taylor. “I would normally not say anything,” Van Toffler, the producer in question, explained to Billboard, “but I had two crying artists.”

When Taylor finished her performance, she wanted to leave with her mother, but Toffler convinced them to stay. “There was a lot of begging,” Toffler said. Shortly thereafter, Beyonce won the Video of the Year award for “Single Ladies,” and instead of making her own acceptance speech, she invited Taylor on stage to give hers. “I’d like to give Taylor her moment,” Beyonce said.

Later that night, Kanye posted a public apology to Taylor and all her fans on his blog: “I’m so sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom. I spoke to her mother right after, and she said the same thing my mother would have said. She is very talented. I like the lyrics about being a cheerleader, and she’s in the bleachers. I’m in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment. Beyonce’s video was the best of this decade. I’m sorry to my fans if I let you guys down. I’m sorry to my friends at MTV. I will apologize to Taylor tomorrow. Welcome to the real world. Everybody wants to boo me, but I’m a fan of real pop culture.

No disrespect, but we are watching the show at the crib right now, cuz, well, you know. I’m still happy for Taylor. Booyah, you are very, very talented. I gave my Awards to Outkast when they deserved it over me. That’s what it is. I’m not crazy, y’all, I’m just really sorry for that. I really feel bad for Taylor, and I’m sincerely sorry. Much respect.”

At first, what happened between Kanye West and Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs appeared to be a piece of pop culture ephemera, a juicy bit of gossip that would rapidly fade away. Instead, it has lived on to warp the image of both its major participants.

Only Beyonce, goddess-like, escaped unscathed, but every time a new Kanye or Taylor scandal emerges, the VMA scandal seems to lurk in the background, bringing out the ugliest side of everyone involved. For a few years after the incident, Kanye and Taylor both went out of their way to appear to publicly bury the hatchet and put the 2009 VMAs behind them.

They were seen chatting amicably at public events together. When Kanye won the Video Vanguard award at the 2015 VMAs, Taylor presented it to him, describing him as “my friend” and joking, “I’m really happy for you, and I’mma let you finish, but Kanye has had one of the greatest careers of all time.”

Over the course of Kanye’s rambling acceptance speech, he told the audience he had smoked weed beforehand, he apologized to Taylor again for what happened in 2009, and then chastised MTV for hyping up the moment because it got them more ratings. Then, in 2016, Kanye released his

song “Famous” and the accompanying video, and everything went to hell. “Famous” is not a song with much plausible deniability.

It contains a verse that is clearly explicitly about Taylor Swift and the 2009 VMAs, making it clear that Kanye agrees with Scott Borchetta that he may have done Taylor a favor that night. Kanye rapped, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. I made that bitch famous, goddamn. I made that bitch famous.”

The accompanying video contains footage of Kanye in bed surrounded by lifelike nude figures of various celebrities associated with him, including Taylor. As far as we know, her nude likeness was used in the video without her permission.

As soon as the song dropped, controversy blew up around it. Kanye said that he’d called Taylor to ask her permission to release a verse about her and that she’d given him her blessing and said she thought the verse was funny. Through a spokesperson, Taylor maintained that he didn’t call for approval but to ask her to release his single “Famous” on her Twitter account.

Taylor’s rep told The New York Times that she declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Not only that, but Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric “I made that bitch famous.”

Shortly afterward, Taylor appeared to reference the controversy in an emotional and highly lauded Grammy’s acceptance speech as the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice.

“I want to say to all the young women out there, there will be people along the way who will try to undercut your success,” she said, “or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work, you will look around, and you will know that it was you and the people who love you that put you there.”

The moment was a solid public relations win for Taylor; it neatly continued the narrative that the 2009 VMAs had put in place: Taylor was an innocent victim who was just trying to focus on her music and do her work and celebrate her successes, and Kanye was a bully who kept trying to knock her down at every turn.

But Kanye’s then-wife, Kim Kardashian, made a move that changed the story.

Kim turned up the heat on the idea that had started to simmer after 2010 – an insistence that Taylor was being manipulative, and the turn against Kanye was kind of racist – and brought it to a boil.

In July 2016, Kim posted a series of videos on Snapchat that showed Kanye calling Taylor up to ask for her permission to include a verse referencing her in “Famous” and in the video. Kanye clearly reads Taylor the line “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex” and asks for her approval.

However, the video is cut together in a way that makes it unclear that Taylor ever heard the line “I made that bitch famous.”

“Relationships are more important than punchlines,” Kanye tells Taylor repeatedly, saying that he wants her to be happy with the finished song. “I really appreciate you telling me about it, that’s really nice,” Taylor says over the phone.

She notes that she was, of course, already extremely famous before the 2009 VMAs, but that there was no reason for Kanye to know that, and anyway, it’s all very tongue-in-cheek. Either way, she goes on to muse over the possibility that it would be good for her public image to be able to say that she knew about the verse ahead of time.

“If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘Look, he called me and told me about the line,'” she says.

Much like with the 2009 VMAs, the resulting fallout was explosive, and ironically, it was Twitter, the platform that first showed its full potential during the 2009 VMAs, that drove the conversation.

The hashtag #KimExposedTaylorParty trended for hours. Twitter users victoriously declared Taylor “canceled” and flooded her mentions with snake emojis. Taylor scrambled to cover the damage, defensively repeating that her big issue with the song was the word “bitch,” which Kanye had never told her about.

“You don’t get to control someone’s emotional reaction to being called that bitch in front of the whole world,” she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post.

But her much-praised Grammy speech suddenly put her in a difficult situation because the speech had sure made it sound like her big issue with Kanye was that he was taking credit for her fame, and now it was clear that she’d given him her blessing to do so.

The sense that had begun to emerge back in 2010, that Taylor was being a little bit strategic, a little bit manipulative with the way she was playing the whole Kanye situation, returned with a vengeance, only this time it was accompanied by what looked like a smoking gun. She wanted to play the victim.

On the set of Taylor on “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” it worked so well for her first time. The public criticism of Taylor was so intense that she disappeared from public view for a full year after Kim released those videos. When she reemerged to release “Reputation” in 2017, she was roundly denounced for continuing to play the victim in her new songs.

In any case, Jay-Z might face a backlash similar to what Kanye experienced in 2009, but given Taylor Swift’s increased popularity since then, there’s a chance Jay-Z could be in for an even rougher ride.