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In 2009, Ye was riding high. His 4th studio album – the 4th album he released and a marked departure from his soul-based, hip-hop sound – was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. A foray into clothing design had culminated in a Paris fashion week sneaker show with Louis Vuitton and a pioneering shoe line with Nike, the first for a non-athlete.
No longer was Kanye the producer who turned rapper and was often seen as the underdog agitating to break out of Jay-Z’s shadow. He had become something even bigger: a major celebrity. The only person who could stop West was Kanye – or as he’s preferred to be known of late.
Now his empire lies in a smoldering heap in the wake of the 45-year-old artist’s October media blitz. According to West himself, he lost $2bn in a single day this week.
Where West’s rise beat the odds, his downfall beggars belief. First there was the smear campaign against his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, then the White Lives Matter fashion statement in Paris, then his complete transformation into an alt-right puppet. And it crescendoed with West’s fusillade of unprompted antisemitic commentary, starting with him needling the Kushner family during an hourlong Tucker Carlson sit-down in early October, that cost West his diverse portfolio.
Several major partners, including Gap, JP Morgan, and Creative Artists Agency, swiftly terminated their relationships with West. All the while Kanye dug in, asserting during a podcast appearance that Adidas – his collaborator post-Nike – would never leave him, no matter how controversial his statements became.
But a week later, Adidas also terminated their partnership, resulting in a decision that Adidas estimates cost them $246m in potential fourth-quarter earnings. Overall, the Yeezy line, which had accounted for as much as 8% of Adidas’s bottom line, became a liability. No wonder it took them a week to break up with him.
We’re a long way from the days when a new Kanye release was a different phenomenon altogether, representing an innovative sound collage at the forefront of the pop music scene. After years of being typecast as a producer, although instrumental in Jay-Z’s influential Blueprint album, West crossed over into becoming an emcee in 2003 with The College Dropout – a release that set him apart from the gangsta rappers of his time, but made preppy style and nerd idolatry cool. By 2005, he consolidated that break with Late Registration, a highly successful album that revolutionized pop music.
West wasn’t necessarily gangsta in the 50 Cent mold, but he was tough in his own way. He had his own near-death moment – a 2002 car crash that shattered his jaw. During an emergency surgery, surgeons inserted a metal plate in his chin and wired his jaw shut – a fortunate outcome that nonetheless would disadvantage an aspiring rapper. But West transformed the experience into a rap over a sped-up Chaka Khan hit. That single, Through the Wire, became the lead single of The College Dropout and solidified West as a talent who could not be deterred.
Before long, West was an icon in culture – surpassing Common in influence in Chicago, bigger than Russell Simmons at the Def Jam label, When you loved this article and you would love to receive more details concerning kanye west poster please visit our website. more impactful in business than Diddy, and even overshadowing the late Virgil Abloh, an intricate relationship that even inspired a South Park parody. And once his ego reached new heights, well, it became impossible to feed. Interrupting Taylor Swift’s winning moment at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, marrying Kardashian, the Marilyn Monroe to his Walt Disney, he once crowed, getting into bed with Donald Trump, and moaning about slavery being “a choice” – none of it appeased Kanye. The rapper has spoken publicly about having bipolar disorder. Medical experts have underscored that mental health struggles and bigotry are separate problems.
And yet, astonishingly: he nearly survived every controversy until Adidas changed their number and things came to a head this month. Now, with just about all his collaborators gone, West isn’t just off Forbes’ billionaires list. He’s become a liability. Not even Candace Owens, who would have West on her show now – and West was supposed to buy the right-wing social network Parler from her husband who serves as the CEO of Parler. Loyal fans who took West’s antics as judo moves to get out of his apparel brand deals surely must feel let down after learning West made an unsolicited visit to Skechers’ LA offices and was shooed away. “I don’t think a board of directors in a million months of Sundays would ever allow a business to touch him again,” says Matt Baker, the chief strategy officer at the brand management firm Deutsch NY.
Where West’s rise beat the odds, his downfall beggars belief. No American icon has ever self-destructed so spectacularly – not the actors (Mel Gibson, Isaiah Washington), TV creepers (Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly), sports heroes (Michael Vick, Joe Paterno), or even the tabloid targets (Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan). Even Roseanne Barr, who once dressed as Hitler and
was finally written off her own TV reboot after a racist one-liner about former White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, didn’t have her fingers in as many pies as West – seeking new partnerships, but also searching for legal counsel for a new divorce. Camille Vasquez, the attorney who redeemed Johnny Depp, won’t touch West, either.
Only recently has that West has trailed an apology on Lex Fridman’s podcast, another unoriginal version of the “if I offended” word salad. But it didn’t make things better for the students of his briefly shuttered Donda Academy, or vindicate his controversial statements about George Floyd, or prevent him from making further offensive comments. But with Kanye’s billions reduced to millions and JP Morgan no longer willing to grant him loans against his net worth or otherwise engage the classic rich guy tax avoidance game, West might soon find himself at odds with the IRS. In the eyes of the IRS, “Heartless” might just describe their approach to West’s financial situation.
Kanye West seemed to have everything – wealth, power, status, and freedom. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. There was no predicting it would come crashing down so dramatically. And yet, the future remains uncertain how much farther he could fall.
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