Adidas drops Kanye West after his anti-Semitic outbursts
Adidas severed ties with Kanye West on Tuesday after facing mounting pressure to do so in the wake of the rapper’s bizarre anti-Semitic outbursts and public meltdowns.
The apparel brand, which announced last week its 10-year relationship with West was “under review,” said it “does not “tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.”
“Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Adidas is the latest high-profile brand, including Balenciaga and Vogue, to cut ties or reconsider their relationships with the rapper-turned-designer following his slew of controversial remarks in recent weeks.
The shoemaker’s decision came after it faced heavy backlash for staying silent when the outrage against West first erupted.
Some accused the retailer of putting profits over ethics for not publicly condemning the 45-year-old’s string of anti-Semitic tweets.
The #boycottadidas hashtag also started trending at one point.
West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, has been releasing his Yeezy sneaker lines with Adidas since 2015.
Upcoming Yeezy collections, which are set to retail between $200 and $300, are already scheduled to drop later this year.
Ending the partnership and the production of Yeezy branded products, as well as stopping all payments to Ye and his companies, will “have a short-term negative impact” of up to $250 million on Adidas’ net income this year, the company told Reuters, partially as the Christmas quarter usually spawns greater demand.
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West had addressed the possibility of Adidas dropping him ahead of the official announcement, telling TMZ over the weekend that the brand is “going through legal right now so anything can happen.”
Elsewhere in that interview, the father of four was adamant that he didn’t think he would be canceled — despite being dropped by other big-name brands.
“I ain’t losing no money,” he said. “The day I was taken off the Balenciaga site, that was one of the most freeing days.”
West added that businesses were only cutting ties with him to “score points.”
“We here, baby, we ain’t going nowhere,” he insisted.
West briefly hired Johnny Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez to oversee all of his businesses, but she dropped him in a matter of days after he refused to retract his words.
“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” West wrote in an Oct. 9 tweet — making an erroneous reference to the military term “defcon,” short for Defense Readiness Condition, or how fast the US armed forces could be deployed in response to a threat.
He earlier shared a since-deleted screenshot on Instagram of an iMessage exchange in which he accused Sean Combs, aka Diddy, of being controlled by Jews.
Asked if he was sorry for his remarks, West told The Post columnist Piers Morgan last week: “No. Absolutely not.”
A number of brands quickly moved to end their partnerships with him, including Balenciaga, which said it “no longer [has] any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.”
A Vogue spokesperson told Page Six last week that it too had no plans to work with the rapper again.
