A new documentary shows previously unseen footage of Lady Gaga planning the joint tour she and Kanye West were due to embark on in 2009 – check it the clip below.
The ‘Fame Kills’ tour would have seen Gaga and West co-headline a series of dates across North America in support of the pop star’s ‘The Fame Monster‘ EP and the rapper’s ‘808s and Heartbreak‘ album.
The planned tour never took place, however. It was cancelled shortly after West interrupted Taylor Swift‘s winner’s speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. No reason was given for the cancellation at the time.
Now, a new documentary about the rapper titled In Whose Name? has unearthed footage of Gaga planning the tour. She can be seen in an office planning choreography for the shows, saying: “Kanye starts here, right? So he’s on one side of the stage, and I’m here on this side of the stage, and I’m trying to get to him, and he’s trying to get to me.
“He’s got the fame and I want the fame, right?” she continues. “So he’s in a dark, cultish, tormented, spiritual world that’s void of naivete and hope.”
A new Kanye West documentary features unseen footage of Lady Gaga planning the Fame Kills tour, which she was set to co-headline with the rapper in 2009 before it was cancelled. pic.twitter.com/6Y5L4Vkpwi
— Gaga Daily (@gagadaily) September 19, 2025
In 2018, Gaga was asked about the tour in an interview while promoting A Star Is Born. Though she didn’t mention West specifically, she compared the experience to the characters in the film.
“I think that everybody has a threshold and everybody’s human, and artists are human,” she said. “This film also deals with mental health, substance abuse, and addiction – a lot of trauma as well, for Jackson.
“For Ally, there’s a suggestion of it as well, when she walks up the stairs and says to her father, ‘You know all about drugs.’ I think it’s important to care for people and to look out for their mental health.”
She added: “There’s nothing wrong with it if an artist needs to stop – it’s them listening to their body and their mind […] It’s nice to be treated like a human being.”
The documentary, released yesterday (September 19), was cut from over 3,000 hours of footage and directed by Nico Ballesteros, who started filming in 2018, at age 18.
It comes after years of controversy for West, which has culminated in him being unable to secure live bookings in recent years, having only played in China and South Korea since 2023. A scheduled show at a Slovakian festival was recently cancelled after a petition against his appearance received thousands of signatures.
In July, he gave a rare performance in Shanghai, which led to fans chanting for a refund after he arrived late and gave an erratic performance.
The latest of Ye’s controversies occurred on May 8 this year, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, when he released a song called ‘Heil Hitler’. Earlier this year, he was also sued for discrimination and accused of texting “Hail Hitler” to Jewish Yeezy employee.
The song led to West being banned from travelling to Australia, with the country’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirming that the rapper’s visa has been revoked earlier this month.
Back in February, the rapper also wiped his Yeezy site clean, leaving only a white t-shirt with a large swastika on the chest available for sale. In previous years, Ye had delivered a series of antisemitic comments during an interview with far-right commentator Gavin McInnes.
