After Taylor Swift made her big music comeback and revealed this week her plans to release a new album, Reputation, on Nov. 10, many people speculated the date was no coincidence.
They noted on social media that Nov. 10 will mark the 10-year anniversary of the death of Kanye West's mother Donda West. Taylor and Kanye have feuded on and off for years and many listeners think their beef helped inspire the pop star's new album, recently released single "Look What You Made Me Do" and overall edgier new sound. She has not confirmed this.
"It is standard practice that releases come out on Fridays and we locked in this release date based on other Universal Music Group releases. There is no correlation," a source close to Taylor's record label, Big Machine Records, told E! News in a statement Friday.
Kanye has not commented.
Kanye and Taylor's feud dates back to 2009, when he interrupted her at the 2009 MTV VMAs. He apologized on Twitter in 2010. Taylor and Kanye later reconciled publicly at the 2015 MTV VMAs, where she presented him with the Video Vanguard Award and joked, "I'm really happy for you and Imma let you finish but Kanye has had one of the greatest careers of all time."
But in February 2016, Kanye sparked controversy again and angered Taylor's squad with his song "Famous," which contains the lyrics, "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous."
Kanye had said at the time that he had talked to Taylor in advance about the lyric and that she "thought it was funny and gave her blessings." Her rep has said Taylor was never made aware of the actual line. At the 2016 Grammy Awards, Taylor used her acceptance speech to slam the rapper, telling women to never let someone else ''undercut'' their success.
Kanye's wife Kim Kardashian told GQ in comments posted in June 2016, regarding "Famous," that Taylor "totally approved approved that" and "totally knew that that was coming out."
"I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved," she said. "What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?"
She said there was video proof of the phone call between Taylor and Kanye, because her husband commissions videographers to film everything when he's recording an album, for posterity.
Taylor's rep said at the time that while "much of what Kim is saying is incorrect," the singer "does not hold anything against Kim Kardashian."
A month later, Kim posted the video of her husband's phone call with Taylor, who took to social media to respond to it.
"Where in the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me 'that bitch' in his song? It doesn't exist because it never happened. You don't get to control someone's emotional response to being called 'that bitch' in front of the entire world," she responded, adding, "I wanted us to have a friendly relationship. He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot 'approve' a song you haven't heard."
"Being falsely printed as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination," she continued. "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009."
Taylor would go on to largely stay away from the spotlight for months. She purged her accounts earlier this month before returning last week with a teaser video of a snake, released in three parts over three days, before her big music comeback announcement.