Lucas Crandall / Staff reporter
Kanye West has often been seen as a person who doesn’t always think before he acts, but recently, this way of doing things has caused him to be brought into the public eye once again, but not for the right reasons.
West’s recent controversy has sparked from his return to Twitter. He began to tweet out anti-semitic statements which led to his brand, Yeezy, losing its partners, Gap and Adidas. This also caused him to lose access to his twitter account and his Instagram account.
West started his music career in 2004 with his release of his first album The College Dropout and his debut single Through the Wire. His album quickly shot up to number two on the Billboard 200, while at the same time, his single rose to number 15.
Since then, West has released tons of new songs, albums, and singles. He has collaborated with other artists including Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Beyonce. He has even amassed an approximated net worth of 2 billion dollars.
One of the largest ways he got all this money was from his sneaker and clothing brand “Yeezy”. West had always talked about how he wanted to make sneakers, so in 2009, he partnered with Nike to create the Nike Air Yeezy. According to Chavie Lieber’s article “The Rise and Fall of Kanye West’s Business Empire,” later in 2013, he publicly stated that he would be leaving Nike for Adidas, citing disagreements over royalty payments.
West released his first pair of sneakers with Adidas in 2014 and in 2016, him and Eric Liedtke, Adidas’ former brand president, signed a ten-year contract. In 2021, the estimated sales of Adidas Yeezy brand hit 1.7 billion.
While he worked on these sneaker projects, he continued to create and release his own music, as well as producing other artist songs through his label “G.O.O.D Music”.
This period of West’s projects and business decisions creating large profit and exposure for himself would soon come to an end as Yeezy sales began to drop later in the decade.
Later, Gap announced and partnership with the Yeezy brand, creating Yeezy Gap. This partnership happened to increase Yeezy’s falling sales, but ultimately, the project did little and stalled after releasing only two products.
West also bought a 4500-acre ranch to turn it into a massive Yeezy manufacturing plant which he said would boost the local economy. However, the ranch was relisted two years later for 11 million dollars.
West would release a shirt which was shown at the Paris Fashion Week in early October which read “White Lives Matter” on the front, a phase often used by white supremacist groups in direct conflict with the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Sean “Diddy” Combs would later post a video on Instagram stating that he did not support the recent shirt design.
In early October 2022 and after a two-year hiatus from the website, West would start to tweet anti-semitic things to his twitter, this included saying phrases like “I’m going death con 3 on the jews” (@kanyewest on twitter), a reference to the U.S. military’s DEFCON. West’s Instagram page was terminated a few days before these tweets and Instagram posts came out. This made people assume he came back to Twitter because of this. Later his Twitter account would be terminated as well due to the anti-semitic tweets.
According to an article posted on Politico called “Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts”, West posted a screenshot of a text conversation with Combs and suggested he was controlled by Jewish people, according to media reports. This nailed in more of his anti-semitic views on society.
On October 25, both of West’s business partners would drop him, no longer selling his products or collaborating with him on new ones.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who bought Twitter during this controversy, would unlock West’s Twitter account and tweet out “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend.” Yet what really remains is while Musk may welcome back West, what will the rest of the world think of West as a public figure? Will his business ventures or his music releases find success again?
From the way it seems right now, West’s career as a fashion and music industry superpower may be history.
Cites:
The Rise and Fall of Kanye West’s Business Empire – WSJ
Kanye West’s Twitter, Instagram locked over offensive posts – POLITICO
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