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Kanye West: Lack of Radio Play After Taylor Swift Feud Contributed to My ‘Breakdown’

The rapper said he wasn’t getting the radio play he wanted after his very public feud with the pop singer.

In a nearly two-hour interview with Charlamagne tha God released Tuesday, Kanye West spoke about how the infamous Taylor Swift incident led him to lose his “connection with radio,” which contributed to his “breakdown.” West said that “really ever since the Taylor Swift moment it just had never, never been the same, the connection with radio. It’s like whatever powers that be it was much harder after that.” West famously stormed the stage of the VMAs in 2009, as Swift was accepting an award for Best Female Video, and said Beyoncé deserved the honor. Then, in 2016, West and his wife, Kim Kardashian, feuded with Swift after West rapped about the pop star in his song “Famous.” The couple released a recording of Swift seemingly agreeing to let him rap about her in the song. In the interview, West also mentioned that the departure of L.A. Reid from his label, Universal Music, affected the radio play of his album The Life of Pablo. West said that the lack of radio pickup of his album was “just one of the factors” that led to “the breakdown or as I like to say, the breakthrough," according to his interview. He also said he would “take the stigma off the word crazy.”