Kanye West is no stranger to famous celebrity feuds, and has made headlines on several different occasions for going head-to-head with other prominent figures.
Here are some of the most memorable feuds the rapper, producer, and fashion designer has been involved in.
Conflicts have been distributed with little discrimination between his fellow artists, the media/paparazzi, and even entire companies.
Nike, Louis Vuitton, and even the Anti-Defamation League, who maintains that Ye has said things that are considered anti-semitic, have ended up on Kanye’s extended list of beefs and have suffered his wrath on social media platforms. Even his family and close friends are not safe from the unique and often sporadic feedback he spews when he gets on his virtual soapbox.
When taking inventory of the biggest Kanye feuds, there is no better place to start than with the notorious Taylor Swift “Imma let you finish” debacle.
Kanye feuds with Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift won the Best Female Music Video award for her single, You Belong with Me, in 2009 at the MTV Music Video awards. In the middle of the young musician’s acceptance of her award, she was interrupted by an energized and indignant Kanye West.
The rapper took to the stage and swiped the microphone from Taylor Swift to give his objection to her win. Kanye famously said into the microphone, “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!”
This unprovoked event created a lot of backlash within the celebrity community, even making it’s way to the White House. President Barack Obama even commented, calling the move “inappropriate” and then going even further to call the artist a “jack–s” for the ordeal.
Kanye has made sly references toward Taylor throughout his discography, not giving space for the emotions to settle or fade.
Taylor Swift isn’t innocent in that regard either. Taylor released her song Innocent in 2010 that was about Kanye interrupting her VMA speech. The rapper then countered with Famous, which literally says that he “made that b***h famous.”
Taylor’s 8th album release, Folklore, had a song called Peace on it that included a lyric that had the Swifties convinced it is about Kanye West. The verse in question is, “But there’s robbers to the east, clowns to the West.” On Apple’s official lyric video for the song, the spelling is lowercase for east while West is capitalized.
The feud between these two doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Kanye feuds with Jay-Z
Jay-Z had Kanye as a dedicated producer within his label, Roc-A-Fella Records, yet was reluctant to sign the rapper. However, he did eventually sign the rapper in 2002. This was later explained as Jay-Z being more protective of his “beats” staying in-house than it was to be some slight against Kanye.
In 2009, Kanye was defensive of Beyonce’s loss to Taylor Swift’s song, You Belong with Me, at the MTV Music Video awards. This was reportedly when the feud began with Jay-Z, despite the previously heard rumors about the hesitancy in signing Kanye West as an artist to his label.
After the Taylor Swift VMA incident, Jay-Z was not pleased with the outburst and subsequent backlash it presented for his wife. While the interjection at the MTV awards show was in defense of Beyonce’s smash hit Single Ladies, her husband was not thrilled to have her name brought up and thrown into the inevitable pop culture faux pas.
Since then, both the artists have released music that is speculated to be about the other. Jay-Z with his lyric in Kill Jay-Z that says, “You gave him 20 million without blinkin’ He gave you 20 minutes on stage, f— was he thinkin’? ‘F— wrong with everybody?’ is what you sayin’ But if everybody’s crazy, you’re the one that’s insane.”
This Jay-Z verse has been interpretted by many to be a response to Kanye’s half hour rant at his Saint Pablo tour event in California in 2016, where he was heard calling out Beyonce and Jay-Z for not visiting him after the robbery in Paris, that happened to Kim Kardashian.
They have been reported to be back in a brotherly frame of mind with each other.
Kanye feuds with Drake
For over a decade now, the chaotic energy between Kanye and Drake has been lobbed back and forth between the two rappers. Both of the artists have taken shots at each other through their music and in the media. The very public feud had been squashed several times, allegedly, yet with the release of Kanye’s DONDA album at the end of 2021, it caught flame yet again.
The latest tea is that despite Drake’s album having an original release date back in January of 2021, it ended up being dropped around the same time as Ye’s much anticipated 10th LP, DONDA, late in 2021.
Drake, the Certified Lover Boy Canadian rapper, had been previously accused of insinuating that he had slept with Kim Kardashian in a previous album, so as the new album was dropped, fans held their breath as they tried to gleen what information they could from the lyrics on the fresh albums.
Kanye’s new lyrics mentioned being stabbed in the back and how he is the G.O.A.T., and Drake’s new tracks talk trash on a burned out mid-40 year old. It doesn’t take too much to align the obvious diss lyrics with their intended trajectory.
Kanye feuds with Justin Timberlake
2015 VMAs had JT performing his new single Suit & Tie with Mr. Roc-A-Fella himself, Jay-Z, which caught immediate shade from Kanye later when he accepted his award for being featured on the award winning Big Sean song, One Man Can Change The World.
Kanye said, “I got love for HOV (Jay-Z), but I aint f—ing with that Suit & Tie.” Justin would later switch up the lyrics while performing his hit on SNL to “My hit’s so sick, got rappers acting dramatic.”
Justin appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon shortly after his SNL appearance and was asked about changing his lyrics up for his performance. JT was smooth in his response and brushed off any doubt that he was beefing with Kanye by saying he “absolutely loves” the rapper.
The previously percieved shade was only adding insult to injury when Justin and Jay-Z announced they were going to tour together – something that took Kanye 10 whole years to get HOV to agree to after signing Ye to Roc-A-Fella Records. Jealousy works as a great catalyst for a feud.
Kanye feuds with Billie Eilish
At a concert, Billie Eilish paused her show to help a struggling fan in the crowd who needed an inhaler. The singer halted entirely and had someone go grab a spare inhaler she had backstage, telling her crowd of fans, “I wait for people to be okay before I keep going.”
Kanye took this as a barb toward his friend Travis Scott after the Astroworld disaster. He then took to Twitter to demand Billie say sorry and threatened that he nor Travis Scott would perform at Coachella if they did not get their apology.
Billie Eilish has a long history of helping her fans if they need assistance and has not yet apologized to Ye or Travis Scott. She has only spoken on the subject by leaving a comment on the original inflammatory post that Kanye put up to demand the apology. Billie Eilish responded, “Literally never said a thing about travis. was just helping a fan.”
There have been no announcements on the Coachella ultimatum that was thrown Billie’s way.
Although there is now a petition to not allow Kanye to perform anyway, because of his recent aggressive public behavior.
Kanye feuds with Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel took to his late night show and famously mocked Kanye for his BBC interview where he seemed to be a bit unrestrained. Kanye lost full control of his ego in the interview and proclaimed that he was the biggest rockstar on the planet to Zane Lowe, the interviewer.
Jimmy and his writers took the low-hanging fruit that Kanye had served up and Jimmy asked his crowd, “Does Kanye West know he’s not supposed to be his own hype man?”
West also took offense to the skit they aired after that joke as he referred to the BBC interview as the “first real piece of media.” In his upset over the joke, Ye began to spew several caps-locked tweets attempting to take several digs at the late night host. The tweets have since been removed.
Later, Jimmy would explain on air that he was “so happy” about the beef with the rapper. Kanye came on Jimmy’s show a few days after the heated Twitter attack to clear the air with the host, and although no official apologies were exchanged on air, the pair seem to have squashed their issues.
Kanye feuds with Pete Davidson
Pete and Kim Kardashian kissed on the set of SNL as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine in a skit in October of 2021. Less than a month passed before a technically single Kim was spotted out on the town with Pete Davidson. This was a slight too large to ignore for Kanye, as he had very publicly said he wanted his wife back after she filed for divorce earlier in the year.
Kanye, doing what Kanye does best, fired off on Twitter and worked his loyal followers into a full blown lather about “Skete” stealing his wife. The feud has been an inferno of drama that has gained a never-ending list of opinions on Kanye, Kim, and their marriage.
There were later some text messages between Pete and Kanye that had gotten leaked. The 44-year-old music mogul asks the 28-year-old comedian where he is physically at in the first text and a cheeky Pete Davidson replied with a picture of himself lying in a bed and captioned it, “in bed with your wife” as he was sporting a peace sign and his mouth exaggeratedly open in what appeared to be a mocking gesture.
Pete swiftly switches gears in the texts and starts imploring Kanye to get mental health support, explaining that there is no shame in taking care of your mind.
Considering Kim and Pete have been fairly quiet about their business, Kanye has taken that time to get into even more feuds with other celebrities weighing in on his marital woes and erratic behavior on social media.
It appears that Kanye West’s ambitious nature definitely extends to his celebrity feuds as the rapper continues to throw shade as his fellow stars.