Kanye West believes Taylor Swift is the reason he has never been invited to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.
In a post that has since been deleted, as captured by WorldStarHipHop, a 47-year-old rapper revealed that his ongoing feud with a 35-year-old pop star has hindered his ability to secure a highly coveted performance opportunity.
According to the rapper, he has missed out on the chance to perform at the Super Bowl due to three specific incidents. These include his statement about George Bush not caring about Black people, the incident involving Taylor Swift, and his decision to wear a MAGA hat.
He went on to say he got ‘blocked from the main stage’ for being ahead of his time, even before he ‘went full Nazi.’
Since Roc Nation took on a live music partnership with the NFL in 2019, Jay-Z has been the primary decision-maker for the Super Bowl halftime show.
Jay-Z and Kanye West had a fallout in 2016 and have endured multiple beefs throughout recent years.
Kanye West is blaming Taylor Swift for the reason he has never been invited to headline the Super Bowl halftime show
Last month, however, West may have irrevocably damaged any chance of mending their friendship after making derogatory comments about his twins.
In a since-deleted post, West used highly offensive language to question the mental capacities of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s seven-year-olds.
Previous musicians who have performed at the Super Bowl include Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Prince, The Weeknd and Michael Jackson.
The closest West has made it to the gig was in 2015 when he co-headlined a pre-Super Bowl concert alongside Rihanna.
Meanwhile, Swift, who has never performed the Super Bowl halftime show, reportedly has ‘Jay-Z’s full blessing’ to perform it.
Despite their past differences, the rapper and Jay-Z have managed to maintain a friendly relationship over the years. Most recently, they were spotted sharing a toast after Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, won Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammy Awards.
Earlier this year, a source told DailyMail.com: ‘Taylor is and always will be considered. And if she wants to do it, she will get the gig.’
The insider, however, revealed that the 14-time Grammy winner will most likely wait until her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, retires from football to agree to the performance.
In a since-deleted X post, the 47-year-old rapper claimed his years-long feud with the pop star, 35, has prevented him from securing one of the most highly sought-after gigs for a performer; seen in 2009
‘I never was allowed to do the Super Bowl because of three moments. George Bush don’t care about Black people. The Taylor Swift movement moment. Wearing a MAGA hat,’ he claimed
In February, she attended the Super Bowl for the second year in a row to support Kelce, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.
‘She doesn’t want to do it now until Travis is fully retired as she would like to be at the game supporting him rather than performing at it,’ the insider told DailyMail.com.
‘When she eventually performs at it, she wants all her loved ones to be able to experience it. And as long as Travis is in the league, the Chiefs have a chance to be in the game, so she is going to wait to do it till he is officially done.’
Before she met Kelce, the source claims Swift never performed the halftime show as it was sponsored by Pepsi up until 2022, which made it a no-go because of her long-standing partnership with Coke.
‘If Pepsi wasn’t the sponsor of the halftime show for so many years, then Taylor Swift would have potentially already been the performer,’ the source added. ‘But she has had a long-standing partnership with Coke and sponsorship with them, so that was one glaring reason she was never able to do it.’
As she grew in popularity Swift’s hectic schedule never allowed her to headline the Super Bowl show, but now she is simply waiting for Kelce’s NFL career to come to an end before agreeing to take it on.
Swift, who has never performed the Super Bowl halftime show, reportedly has ‘Jay-Z’s full blessing’ to perform it; seen in 2024
Despite calls for her to do it, Taylor won’t headline while boyfriend Travis is still an NFL player
West’s latest claim about Swift comes after nearly 15 years of enmity between the recording artists, as the seeds of the feud between were planted at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
In the infamous exchange, West infamously interrupted Taylor, then 19, during her victory speech for the Best Female Video award for You Belong With Me, which had been nominated against Beyonce’s Single Ladies.
Kanye emerged on the stage and took the microphone from Taylor, telling her, ‘Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all-time! One of the best videos of all-time.’
While the musical stars appeared to be on better terms in the years following – they were pictured at a number of events in the years after – things blew up after the release of Kanye’s 2016 song Famous.
Kanye claimed at the time that Taylor had given him her blessing to refer to her as a ‘B****’ in the lyrics of the song, in a reference to the VMAs incident.
Taylor said she never made such an agreement, leading to a public feud with Kanye after he and his then-wife Kim Kardashian released a call Kanye and Taylor had over the contents of the Famous song in July of 2016.
In February, she attended the Super Bowl for the second year in a row to support Kelce, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs; seen in February
Kim alluded to Taylor as a snake upon the release of the call, saying in a tweet, ‘Wait it’s legit National Snake Day?!?!?They have holidays for everybody, I mean everything these days!’
Later, a leaked video appeared to have proven Taylor told the truth about her phone call with Kanye over his controversial song.
The new clip that surfaced on social media appears to show Kanye didn’t consult Taylor about the ‘b****’ lyric, and only asked her about the other line in the song, which was previously mentioned by Kim.
While defending themselves in the past Kim and Kanye did not mention the ‘b***’ lyric, apparently because they knew the phone conversation with Taylor did not touch upon it.
In the footage which was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, Kanye can be seen informing Taylor he is writing a song about her and asked her if she could add hype to the song by tweeting it out.
Before she met Kelce, the source claims Swift never performed the halftime show as it was sponsored by Pepsi up until 2022, which made it a no-go because of her long-standing partnership with Coke (seen in 2025)
Kanye tells her: ‘It has a very controversial line at the beginning of the song about you.’
Kanye then told Taylor she ‘sounded sad’, and the singer questioned if the lyrics were ‘mean’, to which he reassured her he didn’t think they were.
Explaining the context to the lyrics he explains: ‘It says, uh… and the funny thing, when I first played it and my wife heard it, she was like, “Huh? What, that’s too crazy,”
‘And then when Ninja from Die Atwoord hear it, he was like “Oh my god, this is the craziest s**t, this is why I love Kanye…” and now, it’s like my wife’s favourite f***ing line… I just wanted to give you some premise of that.’
He then says the lyric: ‘To all my Southside n***as that know me best / I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex.’
Taylor laughs and says: ‘That’s not mean.’
‘I never was allowed to do the Super Bowl because of three moments. George Bush don’t care about Black people. The Taylor Swift movement moment. Wearing a MAGA hat,’ he claimed (seen in 2015)
‘OK, well this is the thing why I’m calling you, because you got an army, you own a country of motherf***ing 2bn people, basically,’ Kanye says.
‘If you felt that it’s funny and cool and hip hop, and felt like it’s the College Dropout and Ye that you love, people would be way into it, and that’s why I think it’s super genius to have you be the one that says, ‘Oh I like this song a lot… this is cool.’
Taylor then tells Kanye she needs some time to think about it, adding: ‘When you hear something for the first time you need to think about it, because it is absolutely crazy.’
There is no mention Kanye would call her a ‘b***h’ or suggest he ‘made her famous’ during the phone call.
In a separate clip which is circulating on Twitter which appears to be from the same call, Taylor tells Kanye: ‘I [sold] a full 7m of that album before you did that, which is what happened.’
In 2019, Taylor revealed to Vogue that she dealt with the high-profile scandal by channeling her pain and anger into her material (seen in 2024)
In 2019, Taylor revealed to Vogue that she dealt with the high-profile scandal by channeling her pain and anger into her material.
‘A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,’ she said of the difficult time.
‘You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, “Kill yourself.”‘
As she navigated the scandal, which inspired the tracks This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things and Look What You Made Me Do, Swift explained she ‘immediately’ knew she had to ‘make music.’
‘I knew it was the only way I could survive it,’ Swift told the outlet. ‘It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.’
In December 2023, Taylor slammed West and Kardashian for ‘taking her down psychologically’ and forcing her into hiding; seen in 2025
In December 2023, Taylor slammed Kardashian for ‘taking her down psychologically’ and forcing her into hiding.
‘I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls,’ she said during her interview for TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year.
During that period, she all but vanished from the public eye, something that she says came as a result of the Kardashian and West fallout.
‘I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.’
‘I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,’ she explained.
Yet, in the years that followed, Taylor’s career has only gone from strength to strength – while Kanye has disgraced himself by making anti-Semitic remarks.
