It's 2024 and Beyoncé is still in the middle of a Kanye West vs. Swiftie fight

Culture has become nothing but a giant ouroboros as of late. Just this year, we’re repeating the same Super Bowl matchup, presidential ballot, and Sarah Palin press tour as we did in 2020, but the loop goes back so much further than that. It’s been 15 years since the infamous VMA ceremony where Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift to praise Beyoncé, but the two rivals are still fighting. And Beyoncé, through absolutely no fault of her own, is still right in the middle of it.

At long last (derogatory), Kanye’s newest album, Vultures 1, dropped this past weekend following numerous delays, transparent apologies, and backlash from other artists over unapproved samples. There’s more than enough to be angry about if you’re brave enough to actually dig into the album; Chris Brown shows up on a song to ask people to “beg forgiveness” of him, for example.

But Swifties, who’ve hated Kanye for over a decade now, would likely boycott the album regardless of Brown’s presence or even the relatively more recent revelations of West’s antisemitism and general awfulness. Remember, the rapper was also the one who kicked off Swift’s Reputation era by rapping “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/I made that bitch famous” on his 2016 track, “Famous.” The whole relationship between the two artists (and their fans) is a giant wasp nest that Ye, if he knew what was good for him at all, would do better to never poke again. But West famously doesn’t know what’s good for him and poke he did, writing “I mean since Taylor Swift/since I had the Rollie on my wrist/I’m the new Jesus, bitch” on just-released track, “Carnival.”

In response to the line and the album’s general existence, the Swifties kicked into action, as they are wont to do. “SWIFTIE EMERGENCY,” one widely-shared post began, mobilizing the veritable army to stream Swiftie ally Beyoncé’s new single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” to keep Kanye off the charts. But West, never one to just shut up when it would really behoove him to do so, poked the nest again, reposting the Swiftie battle cry on Instagram with a long caption of his own, written in a series of all-caps couplets.

“WHEN I SAID THAT I’M THE NEW JESUS BITCH I WASN’T EVEN THINKING ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT,” West wrote, thanking Swift’s fans for the “FREE PROMO” and claiming that “THIS ALBUM IS ACTUALLY SUPER POSITIVE AND FUN.” (We’ll see who comes out on top on Billboard’s Hot 100 next week.)

West’s post goes on to claim that he was on Swift’s side when Scooter Braun bought her masters (the event that led to the singer’s current Taylor’s Version re-record project), that “SHE AND BEYONCÉ ARE BIG INSPIRATIONS TO ALL MUSICIANS,” and that he’s sure he’s helped Swift’s career more than harmed it. He also shut down a persistent rumor from earlier in the week that Swift had somehow gotten him kicked out of the Super Bowl, clarifying that he had just gone with his wife, Bianca Censori, to a different box. But while all of this is surprisingly cordial language from the rapper, the world hasn’t turned upside down completely. “TO ALL TAYLOR SWIFT FANS I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY UUUM IM NOT YOUR FRIEND EITHER THOUGH LOL,” he wrote.

Elsewhere in the very long post, West complains that he’s been banned from hotels, companies, and restaurants (failing to mention that it’s all been because of his antisemitism, of course), asks Shaq to hang out for some reason, and says the fact that Vultures 1 was removed from streaming platforms quickly after it was released was “TO LIMIT OUR FIRST WEEK NUMBERS” and that it “REMINDS ME OF THE MISTREATMENT OF MY PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF OUR SKIN.”

We can’t, of course, speak to whether or not this is actually what Vultures 1's short life on Apple Music and iTunes reminded West of, but the reason behind its removal is far less of a conspiracy than the rapper is suggesting. The album was pulled off the two streamers Thursday morning (although a few singles still remain) because, according to label distribution platform FUGA (via Billboard), it was never supposed to be released in the first place. “Late last year, FUGA was presented with the opportunity to release Vultures 1. Exercising our judgment in the ordinary course of business, we declined to do so,” said a representative for the platform in a statement. “On Friday, February 9, 2024, a long-standing FUGA client delivered the album Vultures 1 through the platform’s automated processes, violating our service agreement. Therefore, FUGA is actively working with its DSP partners and the client to remove Vultures 1 from our systems.” As of this writing, Vultures 1 has not yet been pulled off of Spotify, Amazon, or YouTube Music.