The camera slowly pans across the peacefully sleeping faces of some of the most famous people in the world. At the center of the unusually wide bed are Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian West, the sheet falling below her ample behind. Next to Kanye is Taylor Swift, lying on her back, breasts exposed.
As the camera moves out from the center, more familiar and increasingly unexpected figures appear. On the right, Kardashian’s sex tape partner Ray J and Kanye’s ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, then Kardashian’s stepmother Caitlyn Jenner, followed by Bill Cosby, who Kanye proclaimed “INNOCENT” on Twitter earlier this year.
On the left, Chris Brown and Rihanna, who were once in the world’s most infamous abusive relationship. Next to them, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, followed finally by former President George W. Bush, who Kanye once said “doesn’t care about black people” on national television after Hurricane Katrina.
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This is the music video for “Famous,” which had its premiere live at the Forum in Los Angeles Friday night, and was streamed simultaneously on Tidal. No official version of the video has been made public as of yet, but the clip below from Twitter is the best (NSFW) version making the rounds about 12 hours later.
Kanye's New Music Video For Famous. This man is a lunatic, I have come to the conclusion.https://t.co/4tcZMQq9f4
— NovelistPrice (@Novelistprice) June 25, 2016
West has been characteristically coy about exactly how he pulled off the video’s visual stunt, and whether any of the nude bodies in it are real, though it appears that most are hyper-realistic wax figures like the ones you might find at Madame Tussaud’s. It takes as its direct inspiration the 2008 painting “Sleep” by Vincent Desiderio.
In an interview with Vanity Fair just before the video made its debut, West made clear that the piece is “not in support or anti” anyone depicted, but is instead meant as a “comment on fame.” He also said that he previewed the video for some famous friends who didn’t make the cut. “Guess what the response is when I show it to them?” he said. “They want to be in the bed.”
The song, “Famous,” from his newest album The Life of Pablo, drew attention when it first premiered for the line, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that bitch famous,” which referred to the incident years earlier at the MTV Video Music Awards when the rapper jumped onstage during Swift’s acceptance speech to inform the world that Beyoncé—notably missing from the bed of naked celebrities—had “one of the best videos of all time.”
“Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account,” a publicist for Swift said in a statement following the song’s release. “She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.”
Days later, Swift fired back at West during her Grammy Awards acceptance speech more directly, saying, “As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I wanna say to all the young women out there: There are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success, or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going, you’ll look around and you’ll know that it was you and the people who love you that put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world.”
West claimed that he’d cleared the lyrics with Swift beforehand, and his wife Kim even said that they had Swift on tape giving the OK to the song’s content—which allegedly prompted a cease and desist letter from the notoriously litigious Swift’s team of legal eagles.
While Swift and several others depicted have yet to make any public statements about their respective nude portrayal, speculation is rampant that lawsuits could be coming West’s way soon. Trump and Cosby in particular have a strong history of suing for defamation.
Meanwhile, gossip sites are quoting anonymous sources who have supposedly heard from Swift that she is “livid,” “horrified” and “pissed to say the least.”
So far, only Chris Brown has responded directly, via Instagram, and he doesn’t seem all that upset about it.