After all the tirades Kanye West has been dropping over at social media for the past few weeks for his disagreements with adidas and GAP, he finally dropped the ball. In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, Kanye said that he intends to go solo soon, and that “he’s done with his corporate partners.”
Here’s what Kanye said in a phone interview on his plans to go solo eventually:
It’s fine. I made the companies money. The companies made me money. We created ideas that will change apparel forever. Like the round jacket, the foam runner, the slides that have changed the shoe industry. Now it’s time for Ye to make the new industry. No more companies standing in between me and the audience.
This development means Kanye will just finish his contracts with adidas and GAP, which are slated to end in 2026 and 2030 respectively. It will be a tricky affair, as it seems that Kanye is biting the hands that fed him–back in 2016, Kanye admitted that he was broke, and he even asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in his “ideas”.
Fast forward to today, Kanye’s Yeezy brand with both adidas and GAP is generating billions of Dollars in revenue. According to an unaudited balance sheet obtained by Bloomberg, Kanye has $122 million in cash and stock–on top of billions more on other assets like Yeezy. There’s no question about how lucrative Yeezy footwear like the Slides, Foam Runners, and 350 Boosts are to adidas financial portfolio, and the same can be said with Kanye’s Yeezy GAP collection.
So what will happen to Kanye’s remaining years with adidas and GAP? “They my new baby mamas,” Kanye said. “I guess we’re just going to have to co-parent those [Yeezy Boost] 350s.” We don’t know if Kanye is going to push out new Yeezy products or just add more colorways to existing products. However, Kanye did say that he’s negotiating adidas for a 20% royalty on all the products he designed for the Three Stripes in perpetuity and save it for his four children.
Like we mentioned in our editorial about the situation, Kanye’s desire to go solo is already happening on the sidelines: aside from having Donda Sports, Kanye has Yeezy Supply as an eCommerce site for all drops–whether they are adidas products or from his solo Yeezy brand that we last heard from since 2020.
Kanye West’s solo plans are grand and ambitious, as he intends to have Donda campuses around the US, which will have houses, shopping, schools, farms, and dorms all together, along with exclusive Yeezy products that are made by in-house designers.
