Death, taxes, and Kanye West courting controversy.
Ye, as he now prefers to be called has had controversy follow him all through his career. From infamously crashing on Taylor Swift’s award to his debacle with his support for Donald Trump, Ye has remained on the threshold of public criticism almost permanently in his music career. That being said, it seems the billionaire has finally taken his antics too far.
Undeniably a rap genius, Kanye has over the years been a source of headache for his fans. His latest gaffe started on October 3 when he wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at his Yeezy season 9 collection show at the Paris Fashion week. People were outraged but not so much as they would at another artist because of course this was Kanye being Kanye. On October 7, West sat down for a controversial interview on Tucker Carlson‘s Fox News show, during which he explained the reason why he chose to wear the shirt emblazoned with “White Lives Matter” on the back.
“I do certain things from a feeling, I just channel the energy. It just feels right,” the designer explained. “It’s using a gut instinct, a connection with God and just brilliance.
He added: “People, they’re looking for an explanation, and people say, ‘Well, as an artist you don’t have to give an explanation,’ but as a leader, you do. So the answer to why I wrote ‘White Lives Matter’ on a shirt is because they do. It’s the obvious thing.”
However, Ye was just about to jump off a proverbial cliff with his next actions. Just a few days later he made posts on his social media that would send everything up in flames.
“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” he tweeted on Saturday in a series of messages.
The tweet has since been removed and his account locked. The social media company Meta also restricted West’s Instagram account after the rapper made an antisemitic post on Friday in which he appeared to suggest the rapper Diddy was controlled by Jewish people.
Kanye had been stretching the limits with his anti-black antics, but going as far as antisemitism broke the camel’s back and corporate America has responded swiftly. Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga, and Vogue decided to end their business relationships with Ye, with Adidas citing his “hateful and dangerous comments and behaviour.
In an Instagram post after the wheels began to fall off for Ye, he sent the post captioned “LOVE SPEECH,” Ye appeared to address Ari Emanuel, the CEO of the media and entertainment firm Endeavor who wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times calling for music companies to cease working with Ye because of his antisemitic comments.
“I LOST 2 BILLION DOLLARS IN ONE DAY AND I’M STILL ALIVE,” Ye wrote in the post. “THIS IS LOVE SPEECH. I STILL LOVE YOU. GOD STILL LOVES YOU.
“THE MONEY IS NOT WHO I AM. THE PEOPLE IS WHO I AM.”
Before being dropped by Adidas and other companies, Ye had a net worth of about $2 billion, according to Forbes’ estimate. Ye’s partnership with Adidas was valued at $1.5 billion, but after the retail company severed ties with the rapper, his net worth fell to $400 million, Forbes said. As a result, he dropped off Forbes’ billionaires’ list.
The rest of Ye’s fortune is in his music, real estate, cash, and a 5% stake in the clothing line Skims, which was co-founded by his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, Forbes reported.
Ye’s Instagram post came hours after he was escorted out of a Skechers corporate office in Los Angeles. He visited “unannounced and without invitation,” the company told Insider in a statement. On top of this, Ye’s controversial $15,000-a-year Christian school abruptly shut its doors too.
There are been a lot of reactions to the recent crash of Kanye. Overwhelmingly it has been a feeling of justice as many people feel he deserves all that’s happening, especially black people who also feel he should have been cancelled a long time ago for his antiblack antics. They also say that his being cancelled now after going against a white race says a lot about how blacks are allowed to suffer injustice. Some quarters have also highlighted how the swift cancelling by corporations also in some way proves a bit of what Ye was referring to when he spoke about the powers of Jewish people.
It is a messy situation and one that might be too expensive for Ye. Although no one doubts that he would recover because he’s been in these types of turbulent waters all too often, there’s just the faint question of what happens next. What if Kanye West has finally gone too far to recover?
