Kanye West is pissed with Adidas brass and he’s making sure everyone in the world knows it.
If you just look at his Instagram account, it’s filled with dozens of posts going at Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted, Adidas Senior Vice President Daniel Cherry, Adidas Creative Director Alasdair Willis, every single member of the Adidas supervisory board and essentially just about anyone with any ounce of influence at the company. These posts started just before Labor day weekend and have continued up until Tuesday.
The Chicago rapper believes that he’s lost the power to make decisions about the direction of his Yeezy footwear brand and that many of these high-ranking officials are making choices without any of his input. He’s even accused the brand of stealing his designs to use on Adidas footwear that’s not aligned with Yeezy footwear but still resembles his products.
Now similar to how he felt about Nike in 2013, Mr. West wants out of his contract with Adidas even though he’s under contract until 2026, claiming Adidas is breaching his contract.
Despite some criticism aimed at Kanye for his long-running Instagram rant, others have come to the rapper’s defense, including fellow hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz.
In an Instagram post shared on Monday night, Swizz posted a picture of bootleg Yeezy’s with a “X” through the middle. He wrote in the caption, “I usually mind my business but this is DEAD WRONG! If we let them do this to @kanyewest it will happen to us also! This man created this groundbreaking innovation and it should be respected as a creative!”
He continued, “YE is only asking for his work to be respected and not stolen that’s not crazy to me !! We not buying these !!!!!!!!!!!! @adidas you’re supposed to be original do the correct thing please !!!
Kanye re-shared the post and wrote, “That’s love,” in response to Swizz.
Fellow hip-hop producer Diddy joined in on the support of Kanye in an Instagram post that read, “Since the era of Run-DMC, @Adidas has always used Hip Hop to build its brand and make billions off of our culture. BUT WE ARE MORE THAN JUST CONSUMERS NOW, WE’RE THE OWNERS.”
He continued, “@KanyeWest and YEEZY are the reason Adidas is relevant to culture. WE KNOW OUR VALUE! I’m done wearing Adidas products until they make this right!! We have to support each other!! Everybody repost this please!!
The Donda rapper’s social media assault on Adidas started in early August after he accused the company of starting Yeezy Day without getting approval from him first. At the time he wrote, “Adidas made up the Yeezy Day idea without my approval.”
He continued, “then went and brought back older styles without my approval picked colors and named them without my approval went and hired people that worked for me without my approval stole my colorways without my approval stole my styles and material approached without my approval and hired a GM of Yeezy without my approval.’
The social media onslaught has not ended since then. Hopefully, for Kanye and Adidas’ sake, they come to a resolution soon.