Kanye Put Adidas On Blast This Weekend For "Stealing His Designs And Lying To Him" And If They Hope To Salvage Their Relationship, They’re Going To Have To Give Into Some Insane Concessions

Hypebeast - Continuing to air his frustrations with adidas (XETRA:ADS.DE -0.40%) on Instagram, Ye has now claimed that the German sportswear company offered him a $1 billion USD buyout. Last week, the vocal creative began to target adidas‘ executives, namely Senior Vice President/General manager Daniel Cherry III, alleging the release of products without his knowledge.

Ye has now taken to Instagram once again to lay out potential plans he has for the future. Highlighting the uncertainty of his relationship with adidas, Ye touched on his desire to take over a shoe company or factories for the construction of footwear. Launching an open call for a shoe company that will let him become the head of the board and “chief decision maker.”

In a follow-up Instagram post, Ye shared a screenshot showing a link to San Antonio Shoemakers’ Wikipedia page. Also known as SAS Shoes, the family-owned American shoe manufacturer based in San Antonio, Texas specializes in handcrafted men’s and women’s shoes. The post was simply accompanied by “: ).”

You guys are never gonna believe this but it was another wild weekend for Kanye West on social media.

After eviscerating Kris Jenner last weekend, he set his sights on his business partner Adidas this time around and went ballistic.

I've broken it down like Ernie Adams conducting film session Tuesdays below, but the long and short of it is this:

Adidas stole Kanye away from Nike back in 2013 for a measly $10 million dollar advance and promise to not interfere with his creative process. Since then, he's grown Adidas into a fucking streetwear juggernaut. Yes, he's made himself filthy, filthy, fucking rich. But he's also made the company, brand, and everything else they associate with hot as fuck with money printing machines in the process. And he realizes this.

So when he began hearing rumors and seeing videos such as this:

He appears got upset that they are essentially repackaging, repurposing, and selling his designs under just the Adidas flagship, and not Yeezy. Wouldn't you?

Obviously Kanye West is extremely particular about pretty much everything. I can only imagine how many thousands and thousands of designs he's shelved and scrapped not to mention how many tiny detailed iterations he's forced his design team to produce of shoes and slides that will never even see the light of day because he's not 110% on board with it. It's got to be frustrating as hell. 

Which is why the suits at Adidas apparently decided to begin releasing these designs without the Yeezy brand (or price tag) on them. And why Chinese bootleggers have run rampant with mass producing leaked prototypes on their own and selling them to unsuspecting buyers. 

It has now gotten to the point that Kanye is demanding a buyout from Adidas, saying the damage that's been done is irreparable.

Hypebeast …Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted, Adidas Senior Vice President Daniel Cherry, or just about anybody with some measure of influence at Adidas. Kanye West is pissed. He believes he’s lost control of Yeezy footwear and that high-ranking officials are making decisions about the line without his input. Furthermore, and perhaps even more damning, Kanye is accusing Adidas of flat-out stealing his designs, with recent non-Yeezy Adidas footwear like the adiFOM Q and the Adilette 22 bearing close resemblance to his products.

Now, the proverbial stuff has hit the fan and Kanye is saying that he wants out of his Adidas contract due to what he believes is a breach. Adidas isn’t commenting on the matter as of yet, but Kanye has vowed to keep commenting until he gets his desired resolution. The options appear to be between more money and power at Adidas or a breakup with the company that helped him reach billionaire status. Kanye is under contract with Adidas until 2026, so the end of this dispute may not be imminent.

In the meantime, here’s a rundown of everything Kanye West said about Adidas.

Once again, Kanye is going after the CEO of a major footwear brand. Much like he did with former Nike CEO Mark Parker in 2013 and the years that followed, Kanye is now sending shots at Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted. He posted this mock New York Times cover “announcing” Rørsted’s death on Sep. 1. Last month, it was announced that Rørsted will be stepping down from his position in 2023.

Many of Kanye’s anti-Adidas posts have been directed toward Daniel Cherry, the new Senior Vice President and General Manager of Adidas. Kanye believes Cherry, a newcomer to Adidas after making the jump from DC Comics earlier this year, is the primary person making decisions for Yeezy footwear without his approval. He also hates Cherry’s hat A LOT.

In addition to Rorsted and Cherry, Kanye has been posting headshots of various members of Adidas’ Supervisory board throughout the weekend. After the images were originally posted with aggressive captions and removed by Instagram (according to Kanye), they were reposted with sarcastically positive captions.

He says that whether Adidas keeps him or lets him go, it’s going to cost the company billions of dollars. Not a single billion—BILLIONS. Additionally, he doesn’t plan on waiting the 7 months that were apparently outlined in a breach letter he sent to the company—he wants out immediately. 

Kanye makes some pretty big business-related claims about Adidas. 

He held nothing back. He claimed Adidas offered him $1 Billion in a buyout which he laughed at because he makes $500 million a year from them in royalties alone. 

He then went on to state that Cherry is making $2 million annually and doubled-down on a previous claim that Yeezy accounts for 68% of Adidas’ online sales. Which is bonkers.

Beyond the numbers, Kanye once again states that Adidas is creating Yeezy colorways and naming them without his approval.

With Kanye saying that Yeezys and Yeezy colorways are being released without his approval, some of his fans are now asking for a list of the Yeezys that he did approve of so that they can support those pairs instead.

To really shake Adidas up, Kanye is now posting the competition’s sneakers in the form of Martine Rose’s Nike Air Monarch collaboration.

Can you imagine if Nike was able to steal Kanye back from Adidas? The power shift would be unreal.

Kanye again made it clear that he doesn’t plan on working with Cherry, “Daniel Son” in this case, and says that he’s walking out the door with his 15% royalty intact.

Is this entire ordeal Kanye’s way of voicing displeasure for not being considered to fill influential positions at Adidas? In the past, he’s expressed a strong desire to be named Creative Director of Adidas. Thus far, it doesn’t appear that the company has given him any serious consideration for a title beyond his current role of collaborator. Here, he puts himself as the ‘Head of Adidas’ in a hypothetical scenario and makes sure to extend a warning to one of his other partners—GAP.

Here's the post of his demands to terminate his partnership.

Again, call the man crazy all you want but numbers don't lie. Everything he touches turns to gold (aside from his romantic relationships) and he is one of the biggest businesses on the planet.

 For Adidas to rock the boat and potentially fuck this up has got to be one of the dumbest, ill-advised risks of all time.