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Los Angeles - Kanye West "fought" for Famous to be the lead single from The Life of Pablo.
The 38-year-old rapper performed the song, which features the lyrics "I feel like me and Taylor Swift might still have sex, I made that bitch famous", for the first time on Saturday and continued to defend his decision to rap about the Shake It Off hitmaker saying he gets "in trouble for saying the truth".
Speaking to the crowd at the Paradise International Music Festival in Manila in the Philippines, he addressed the incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards when he interrupted her acceptance speech for Best Female Video for You Belong with Me.
He said: "That night when I went on stage was the beginning of the end of my life. You know what night I'm talking about. When I just said what everybody else was thinking."
Ever since, the All Day hitmaker feels like he's had to "fight" for his art and to be able to speak his mind because he felt like the whole world hated him.
After asking if he could sing Famous for a second time, he said: "It's something I wanted to say so bad that they told me I couldn't say.
"So if I get in trouble for saying the truth; what's being said the rest of the time?
"I had to fight for every day of my life when the whole world turned against me for saying out loud what everyone else felt. But that's the job of an artist, of a true artist, not to be controlled by financiers, not to be controlled by perception but only to be controlled by their truth. What you see, what you feel and say what you fucking feel. I fought to make Famous the first single off of The Life of Pablo."
