An SNL Sketch Predicted Kanye West’s Infamous Taylor Swift VMAs Interruption

Rapper Kanye West provided quite the entry into pop culture history when he stepped onto the stage of the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to interrupt pop star Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video. In the infamous moment, West spoke into the microphone with Swift still on stage next to him, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” It sparked outrage and memes, and it wouldn’t even be the most ludicrous or rude thing West would do in his career. However, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised — because “Saturday Night Live” saw this coming nearly two years before the incident.

In an episode of “The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast,” Andy Samberg, Akiva Shaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Seth Meyers looked back on West’s appearance in the 33rd season premiere of “SNL” in September 2007. While the podcast primarily focuses on the various SNL Digital Shorts created by The Lonely Island during their tenure on the sketch show, it occasionally veers into more general “SNL” territory, which is how its hosts found themselves discussing this topic. While West wasn’t the host of the show, as that honor fell to NBA superstar LeBron James, the rapper did star in his own sketch, in addition to appearing as the musical act. And it’s amazing how prescient the sketch turned out to be.

Shaffer takes the time to acknowledge that they’re going to talk about West in the context of the time of his appearance without acknowledging the much more controversial behavior he’s displayed in recent years. But even in 2007, West was not without somewhat of a reputation, especially when it came to his behavior at awards shows. Indeed, West had been captured on camera being upset that he lost awards, and he even took the stage to express certain statements. This is what prompted Shaffer to write a sketch in which Kanye West interrupts a variety of award shows, from the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards to a local pumpkin contest. Again, this was nearly two years before the VMAs that would happen in June of 2009!

In the sketch above, Kanye West appears on the BET music video countdown series “106 & Park” to specifically address his questionable behavior at various awards ceremonies, which then leads to the hosts (played by Kenan Thompson and Maya Rudolph) to show a series of clips where West interrupts increasingly silly awards shows that he shouldn’t even be appearing at in the first place. How did this idea come about? Shaffer explained on the podcast:

“The timeline of this is crazy, though, because it’s really hard to remember why we had this idea, but it had to do with maybe Britney Spears? I can’t remember, but he was a little bit famous for bad awards show behavior, for being either a poor loser or speaking out on behalf of others. But the Taylor Swift famous moment you are thinking I’m talking about has not happened yet. That happens a year from now, but it was already known enough that he had bad behavior at awards shows, that we talked to him.

I think it was partially his idea. He said, ‘I should make fun of awards show stuff,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that makes perfect sense.’ Because we knew that [awards show] world, Lorne [Michaels] asked me to get on the phone with him, and Seth as head writer was like, ‘I’ll get on with you.’ So me and [Seth] called Kanye, and he kinda pitched it, and then me and [Seth] wrote out a big awards show thing.”

The prescient “SNL” sketch was so remarkably similar to what West would go on to do during Swift’s VMAs acceptance speech in 2009 that Shaffer actually thought it was a comedic bit when the mishap unfolded. Shaffer recalled, “I remember thinking at the VMAs live, ‘Oh, this is so funny, but he’s kinda ripping off our bit. I wish he had called us to help him work on this.'” After going through the whole process of reasoning why it was okay for West to do this bit himself, Shaffer then realized it was not a joke, and the rest is pop culture history.

By the way, as another little Kanye West/”SNL” fun fact: Meyers explained what he believed was the reason that West would go on to include lyrics in his song “Power” that said, “F**k ‘SNL’ and the whole cast. Tell them Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass. More specifically, they can kiss my a**hole.” Meyers is under the impression that it’s because they allowed Taylor Lautner to karate kick a cardboard cutout of Kanye West on stage when he hosted “SNL,” shortly following the Swift VMAs incident. Meyers couldn’t come up with any other reasons that West would suddenly turn on them, and honestly, it’s just petty enough to fit the bill. The more you know!