Kanye West has called out Adidas once again, this time accusing the brand of tactically trying to hold him back.
The rapper and entrepreneur, who now goes by Ye, took to Instagram to share a lengthy post confronting the German sportswear brand and accusing it of making efforts to deliberately bury his own YEEZY site in Google search results.
Sharing a screenshot from his phone, the image showed that the search engine placed Adidas’ website higher than his own YZY page – something the artist described as a tactical move to hurt his business.
The two had worked together for a number of years, although the partnership ended with a number of lawsuits after the rapper’s anti-Semitic comments caused the company to pull their sponsorship under the collaborative Yeezy brand. They have since been entangled in a number of legal battles.
Taking to Instagram, Ye wrote: “When you Google Yeezy.com, the Adidas site comes before the Yeezy site. Members at Adidas, stop doing this. Stop doing your moves to hold me back. Our partnership is done.”
He continued, outlining reasons why their partnership went south and bringing up his past claims that the brand was guilty of “design theft and oppression” before the anti-Semitic comments were shared. “You’re a $60billion company that froze my accounts. Now I’m back on my feet (no pun intended) and I’m not going to stand for this (no pun again),” he wrote. “I did phenomenal work for you guys and because I stood up for myself, y’all tried to intimidate and oppress me. Everyone remembers I had major issues with Adidas because of design theft and oppression before ‘the tweet’.”
Later in the caption Ye also called out fellow designer Jerry Lorenzo, who recently signed a deal with Adidas through his brand Fear Of God (as per Hypebeast). He accused Lorenzo of being “corny and disloyal” and claimed the designer copied him.
“I still showed up to his show that was a copy of my Hollywood Bowl show, being the so-called bigger man, but I’m never doing that again for no one,” he added, going on to say that he is putting himself and his brand first going forward.
“It’s Yeezy over everything. Everyone that ever took a picture next to me, that had their own clothing lines and agendas, everyone knows they was acting like they were my friends to promote [their] weak-ass fake Yeezy lines. They never wanted to truly work for the king. They wanted to use the king. Get paid more than they would get paid anywhere else be yes man and be happy for any time I didn’t accomplish what ‘we’ were working towards. Now they banished.”
Ye continued, outlining the financial gain made since splitting with Adidas and launching his own platform. “The Yeezy.com site made $100million last year and that was with it only being up for six months. I took the site down for six months to get control over my Shopify accounts.
“People wanted to make me believe that I couldn’t do this on my own. We sold over a million pairs of pods and I’ve been working on 10 other styles for the past two years. It’s Yeezy for the people. Everything else was in the way.” Check out the full post above.
Kanye West attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. CREDIT: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Upon the collaboration with Adidas being axed, the rapper and producer refused to accept that the term “anti-Semitism” existed, claiming that it was “not factual”. He did, however, offer something of an “apology” to those who he offended with the comments. Last year, West also said that he was “two months from going bankrupt” after the sports brand cut ties with him.
Last October, the legal issues between the two continued to make headlines and it was reported that Adidas was set to receive a €100million boost after settling with Ye – after years of lawsuits that followed the abrupt end of their partnership.
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