LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper Kanye West apologized for a second time yesterday after celebrities and fans poured scorn on his hijacking of teen country star Taylor Swift’s moment in the spotlight at the MTV Video Music Awards.
West was booed loudly when he leaped on stage and grabbed the microphone from Swift, 19, as she was accepting the trophy for best female pop video for “You Belong With Me” at the awards ceremony on Sunday.
West declared it should have gone to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video, which he called “one of the best videos of all time.”
The outburst on the live telecast was seen by some 27 million viewers — the largest TV audience since 2002 for the annual MTV Video Music Awards, MTV said yesterday. Video of the incident was seen by some 2 million times on the MTV.com web site alone.
“I feel like Ben Stiller in (the movie) Meet the Parents when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave…That was Taylor’s moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry,” West wrote on his blog yesterday.
West had earlier written that he was “so sorry.”
Swift, the biggest-selling artist of 2008 in the United States with more than four million albums, said little on Sunday about the outburst.
“I’ve been getting so many text messages and everybody’s been really nice. So I’ve had a really, really fun night. It’s been interesting definitely. It’s definitely been an interesting night,” she said.
