Kanye Wests relationship with Teyana Taylor, the star of his Fade video

While all eyes were on Kanye West when MTV gave him four minutes to do whatever he wanted on stage at the VMAs Sunday night, his video for “Fade” captured all the attention seconds later.

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In the three-minute video, the camera focused on R&B singer Teyana Taylor dancing (ending with a steamy shower scene with her fiance, NBA player Iman Shumpert) — and inspired the people of Twitter to hit the gym first thing on Monday:

Teyana Taylor is gonna be responsible for so many new gym memberships tomorrow

Taylor, 25, is known for her own singing career — she first signed a record deal when she was a teenager, and soon after, appeared in an episode of MTV’s classic docu-series “My Super Sweet Sixteen,” about elaborate birthday parties. But for those wondering about the Kanye connection, Taylor is on West’s record label, and the two singers have been friends for years. They met back in 2008 during West’s “Glow in the Dark” tour, when Taylor was on Pharrell Williams’s label. (Pharrell’s band, N.E.R.D., was opening for West.)

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“Kanye used to always like my outfits. So from jump we became fashion friends and we’d talk about different clothes and designing different things,” Taylor told Complex in 2012. “We’d email each other different garments that we liked. That’s how we became friends and super close.”

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A couple years later, West invited Taylor over to see some new items of custom-made clothing for his tour. While she was there, he played her some of his album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and invited her to do background vocals on “Dark Fantasy.” He was impressed, and in 2012, Taylor left Williams’s label and signed to West’s G.O.O.D Music label and Def Jam.

Taylor’s debut album, “VII,” was released in October 2014; she said that she wouldn’t even let West listen to it until she got it exactly right, but because they are both perfectionists, he understood completely. At the label release party, West gushed about Taylor’s drive.

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“There’s never been someone on the label who’s had to take something into their hands quite as much as this girl had to do. So I really want y’all to give her credit for fighting against the entire system,” West said.

Read more:

What Kanye West said at the VMAs, annotated (full transcript)

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