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Kanye West and Taylor Swift: How a long-running 'feud' ended with rapper fighting for pop icon

The feud between the Kanye West and Taylor Swift just might pause, if not end, over one common goal: getting the master tapes of their albums back

It's been over eleven years since the Kanye West and Taylor Swift feud began. What started on September 13, 2009, at the MTV Video Music Awards has stretched out into full-blown controversy over the years which, at one point, involved media personality and businesswoman Kim Kardashian who also happens to be Kanye's wife.

If you've ever visited Kanye's Twitter page and looked at the replies under any of his tweets, you'd find thousands of replies saying 'Taylor ended you' or calling him 'Fadye'. But, the feud between the two stars just might pause, if not end, over one common goal: getting the master tapes of their albums back.

Kanye, who's been on an incessant rant about the music industry, tweeted in all caps on September 18, "I’m going to personally see to it that Taylor Swift gets her masters back. Scooter is a close family friend” and followed it up by a seemingly unrelated tweet saying, "CULTURE IS THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN HUMANITY UNDER GOD."

Kanye then went on to claim that he'll fix the music industry, like he has been saying for the past few days, and tweeted, "We’re gonig [sic] to transparently change every album deal every publishing deal every merch deal every touring deal except for Drake’s deals,” Ye wrote adding a quick Drake roast. “Just kidding…I love Drake too…all artist must be free.”

Musicians across board agree with Kanye and his opinions about the industry they work in and the contracts they're bound to. Swift's fight to own her masters is not hidden. To provide a little background, Ithaca Holdings LLC–a holdings company led by Justin Bieber's manager Scooter Braun and backed by private-equity giant Carlyle Group–acquired Nashville-based indie label Big Machine Label Group for around $300 million. Big Machine is the label which Swift was initially signed to before she signed an agreement with Universal Music Group (and Republic Records) for all her future material (the first release on UMG being her seventh album 'Lover'). This came after UMG permitted Swift to maintain ownership of her future masters, a clause that wasn’t part of her agreement with Big Machine.

Since Ithaca’s buyout of Big Machine, Swift has publicly spoken against both Braun and Scott Borchetta (the man who signed her as a 15-year-old to Big Machine). Swift also revealed that Big Machine, at one point, gave her the opportunity to own her original masters, but on the condition that she sign a new deal with them. “I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past,” Swift had said at the time.

Kanye recently tweeted every single page of his life-time contract with UMG/Sony, and a video of him peeing on his Grammy Award. He's determined to own the rights to his original masters and seeing how Taylor wants the same, the two artists can together be a strong, almost unstoppable, force of change in the music industry.

Despite all that's happened between the two–from the infamous VMA incident where Kanye got on-stage during Taylor's acceptance speech and interrupted her  to the release of his 'Life of Pablo' track 'Famous'–the feud can finally be coming to a temporary end for a bigger cause.