Kanye West pens XXL magazine story addressing Taylor Swift incident: 'I felt very alone'
You’ve read the tweets and seen the televised performance. Get ready for the latest stop in Kanye West‘s tour of contrition for interrupting Taylor Swift that one time last fall: The rapper has written a cover story for XXL magazine‘s October 2010 issue.
According to excerpts first published by Popeater, West addresses the Video Music Awards faux pas in detail. “I stress that the incident wasn’t about Taylor personally,” West writes. “And it definitely wasn’t about race. Where I messed up is, at the end of the day, it’s your show, Taylor. It’s your show, MTV.” He adds: “The relationship with the public and with your fans is like the relationship with your girlfriend. How could I not, at a certain point, be like, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been at the awards show. I’m sorry.’ Not that I don’t deserve to get beat up or change who I am inside, to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
West goes on to discuss how he felt after the Swift run-in cratered his public image. “I knew I wasn’t in a great spot publicly after the incident, but I would just block it out and work as hard as possible and let my work be my saving grace,” he writes. “In a way, I had thrown a Molotov cocktail at my own career, and it gave me an opportunity, for the first time, to go away and find out who I was. Because I felt very alone.”
In addition to the cover story, XXL also made West the creative director of a special 40-page section in the magazine.
What do you think of West’s latest public statement? Will you read the full story when XXL arrives on stands Sept. 28?
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