Taylor Swift Compares Her 2016 Feud With Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to a ‘Tidal Wave’

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since rapper Kanye West said those now infamous words “I’mma let you finish …” to Taylor Swift as he interrupted her acceptance speech for the Best Female Video for her hit song “You Belong With Me” onstage at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. But now, almost exactly a decade later, Taylor is 29 years old and she just released her highly anticipated seventh studio album Lover — and she’s reflecting on that moment in pop culture and the longstanding feud it ignited that continued up until recently.

In an interview with The Guardian published on Saturday, August 24, Taylor opened up about how that moment in 2009 culminated in an all-out social media war between Kanye and his wife, Kim Kardashian. In 2016, Kanye, 42, released his song “Famous,” in which he rapped: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” Even though Taylor and Kanye had discussed the mention, she out-right denied that she had given Kanye permission to use the “bitch” lyric. Shortly after, Kim, 38, released an audio recording of a phone conversation between Taylor and Kanye that seemed to prove otherwise. She said going through that in 2016 felt like being consumed by a “tidal wave.”

“You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she told The Guardian. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards! Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”