It wasn’t an easy road to reconciliation between Taylor Swift and Kanye West after he stormed the stage during her 2009 VMA acceptance for the now infamous “Imma let you finish” moment. But according to Swift, they eventually mended their relationship with a little help from Jay Z.
“I feel like I wasn’t ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me,” Swift told Vanity Fair. “And he wasn’t ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me—so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time.”
“I became friends with Jay Z,” she explained later, saying that it was Jay Z who started the process of breaking down fences. “And I think it was important, for Jay Z, for Kanye and I to get along.”
“Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I’ve accomplished,” Swift shared, “and I could ask him how his kid [daughter North West] is doing.”
Swift also went on to say that while her friendship with West has been strengthened, her strongest ties are to her fellow women in the industry.
“When you’ve got this group of girls who need each other as much as we need each other,” she said. “In this climate, when it’s so hard for women to be understood and portrayed the right way in the media… now more than ever, we need to be good and kind to each other, and not judge each other—and just because you have the same taste in men, we don’t hold that against each other.”