2009 VMA Interruption

The night Kanye West took the microphone from Taylor Swift.

While Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West went on stage, grabbed the microphone from her and proclaimed that Beyoncé deserved the award.

Lore & Background

The controversy that followed sent West into a self-imposed exile in Hawaii, where he recorded My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. His decade-spanning feud with Swift, which affected both their reputations, has been described as one of the music industry's most infamous, and his 2016 video for "Famous" depicted wax figures of celebrities including Swift sleeping nude in a shared bed.