KATY Perry has finally addressed her 'bad blood' with America's golden girl Taylor Swift - and we have Nicki Minaj to thank for it.

Beef between Swift and Perry dates back several years, starting when Perry supposedly stole Swift's backup dancers. The relationship has been spectacularly frosty ever since.

Perry has never spoken directly about it, until now. Overnight, she tweeted a takedown of the Shake It Off singer following a spat between Swift and rapper Nicki Minaj.

That was sparked by Swift, who posted a fiery response to a tweet by Nicki Minaj about how her Anaconda video was overlooked in the MTV VMA awards nominations.

Minaj tweeted: "If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year."

This was taken by Swift as a reference to her song Bad Blood, which was nominated for video of the year. The video shows Swift as an action hero, surrounded by a posse of women - many of whom are models with unattainable figures.

"I've done nothing but love and support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot," Swift tweeted to Minaj in response.

This prompted Perry to enter the fray with her own criticism of Swift.

"Finding it ironic to parade the 'pit women against other women' argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the takedown of a woman," she tweeted.

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The Roar singer added that she would have liked to see Rihanna's Bitch Better Have My Money nominated.

Swift has said that she wrote Bad Blood about another pop star - widely believed to be Perry.

With her public response to Minaj, the self-styled feminist has been accused of not understanding the relationship between gender and race.

Addressing the feud in the Guardian, music journalist Tshepo Mokoena wrote that Swift's tweets as a "faux-feminist" defense to a black artist exposing the hypocrisy of the US music industry - that "profits from the commercialisation of parts of African American culture without rewarding the creators of those trends".

Race issues were at the heart of Minaj's message about being excluded from the VMAs.