Taylor Swift admits she has Jay Z to thank for much of the new-found respect Kanye West now shows her.

West infamously interrupted Swift's 2009 VMA award-winning speech and strongly hinted she didn't deserve the award, resulting in relations between the two superstars being as frosty as one might expect.

"I feel like I wasn't ready to be friends with [West] until I felt like he had some sort of respect for me," Swift told Vanity Fair for its September cover issue. "And he wasn't ready to be friends with me until he had some sort of respect for me-so it was the same issue, and we both reached the same place at the same time."

Much of it only came about after Jay Z's intervention. At some point, Swift says she became friends with Beyoncé's husband, and they both knew it was important to him that she and West got along. Mission accomplished, as the two now support one another both in public and behind the scenes.

"Kanye and I both reached a place where he would say really nice things about my music and what I've accomplished," Swift said. "I could ask him how his kid [daughter North West] is doing."

The 25-year-old Swift also still clings tight to her close-knit clique of friends that includes Selena Gomez, Karlie Kloss, Gigi Hadid, Lena Dunham and Jaime King. Given the similar circles they all run in, Swift admits there have been times when even some of their dating partners have overlapped, like her first love Joe Jonas now dating Hadid.

But even that's now not a problem.

"It's almost like the sisterhood has such a higher place on the list of priorities for us," Swift sai. "It's so much more important than some guy that it didn't work out with."