Kanye West fires broadside after broadside against Adidas

Does Kanye want out of partnership with Adidas?
Sep 6, 2022
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PHOTO: Kanye West/Instagram

IT APPEARED to be an unhappy weekend for Kanye West, who loaded his Instagram guns and took dead aim at adidas (with Gap also caught in the crossfire).

Over the past few days, the musician who now styles himself as Ye has posted multiple Instagram posts ranging from accusatory (“They were using this black man to try to oversea the Pharrell project my project along with other projects”), to philosophical (“This war isn’t about money, it was about control”), to the absurd (a now-deleted newspaper mock-up announcing the death of adidas CEO Kaspar Rørsted, who recently announced that he will step down from his post in 2023).

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    Explaining Kanye West's most recent criticism of adidas

    Much of his ire seems to be centered on the footwear giant’s handling of his Yeezy line of shoes. Across several posts, he’s accused adidas of releasing shoes without his approval.

    He also makes some bold claims about the shoe line’s importance to the Three Stripes’ bottom line.

    “They tried to buy me out for 1 billion dollars,” he claimed in one post. “My royalties next year are 500 million dollars alone.”

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    Additionally, he said that Yeezy makes up 68 percent of adidas’ online sales. (In a presentation accompanying their latest financial statement, the brand said that they had seen “strong double-digit growth” in Yeezy in the first quarter of 2022, thanks to “new product drops.”)

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    The rapper also took repeated pot shots at adidas senior vice president Daniel Cherry, and bizarrely, the SVP’s choice of hats. He also posted head shots of the entire supervisory board at adidas, accompanied by vicious captions.

    “What shoe company will give me control?” he lamented in one post yesterday.

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    In his most recent post on Tuesday morning (Philippine time), he said cryptically, “Adidas don’t want no more smoke. The movie credit’s are rolling.”

    He added, “I gave them the opportunity to settle this quietly now it’s time for Gap.”

    As of posting, Adidas has not commented publicly on the mercurial musician’s multiple diatribes. On September 1, adidas Philippines announced an online raffle to purchase a new Yeezy colorway, the Boost 350 V2 “Slate”.

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    This is only the latest storm in the sometimes tumultuous, but certainly very lucrative, partnership between the global sportswear giant and Kanye West. In late 2020, in the midst of his short-lived campaign to run as US president, he issued a Twitter ultimatum to adidas, saying that he would wear Jordans until he gets a seat on the board.

    Ye's partnership with adidas is under contract until 2026.

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    PHOTO: Kanye West/Instagram
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