Kanye still doing penance over Swift incident

Kanye West is still feeling the pain over his ambush of Taylor Swift last year — and he's expressing it all over Twitter.

West unleashed a torrent of emotions on his official Twitter account on Saturday, acknowledging once again that he was wrong for jumping on stage, grabbing the microphone from Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards and saying her trophy should have gone to Beyoncé.

But the rapper-producer said that he has experienced enormous pain, been the subject of death wishes and suffered tremendous setback to his career. "How deep is the scar ... I bled hard ... cancelled tour with the number one pop star in the world ... closed the doors of my clothing office," he tweeted.

The multiplatinum, Grammy-winning superstar had been one of the decade's most successful and critically acclaimed stars, despite sometimes boorish behaviour and meltdowns at other awards shows when things did not go his way.

However, when he upstaged Swift — the then-teenage darling of pop and country music worlds — the public had had enough. There was tremendous backlash against West — even US President Barack Obama was caught calling him a "jackass".

West said he's now "ready to get out of my own way. The ego is overdone."

He also apologised to Swift again, and said he has written a song for her that he hopes she will perform.

"If she won't take it then I will perform it for her," he said.