Kanye West reportedly once fired a Yeezy employee for suggesting he play Drake’s music.
In a new Rolling Stone article lifting the lid on the “toxic,” “abusive” and “chaotic” working environment at Yeezy, one former staffer recalled Kanye playing his own music at his studio space shortly before he debuted his Yeezy Season 1 collection in 2015.
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After one of his designers suggested he play something else, Kanye reportedly looked around the room and asked the employee what to play. The staffer — more of a punk and rock fan than a Hip Hop head — clumsily suggested Drake, which allegedly cost them their job.
“I thought, ‘Oh, he’s a rapper, I should probably mention some rap,’” the former employee said. “Big mistake — the next day I was fired.”
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Kanye West and Drake have shared a rocky relationship over the years, although they appeared to be on good terms in 2015. The pair worked together on Big Sean’s “Blessings” and shared the stage at OVO Fest, and there was even talk of them doing a joint album.
However, the former Yeezy employee’s comments suggest Kanye’s rivalry with Drake was brewing at a higher temperature than most fans thought, before it eventually exploded into an all-out feud last year.
The Rolling Stone story, which featured the input of nearly two dozen former Yeezy, adidas and Gap staffers and collaborators, also shed light on Kanye West’s controversial White Lives Matter shirt, which he debuted at his Yeezy Season 9 fashion show in Paris in early October.
According to one source, the original idea was for the shirt to feature a racially-charged message along the lines of “We Are N-ggerish,” with the intent of “making fun of white people.” The final product, however, which was championed by rightwing political commentator Candace Owens, “just made it political, and just stupid,” one former staffer said.
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In the run-up to the Yeezy Season 9 show, Kanye reportedly demanded his entire Yeezy Gap team move offices, creating a “haphazard” situation that resulted in the loss of fabrics and pattern designs. The team were forced to scramble to put together a collection “without the blessing of adidas and Gap.”
When Kanye arrived with the White Lives Matter shirts, numerous Yeezy team members were caught off-guard. “It was like, ‘What the fuck?’” one recalled. “A lot of us were very uncomfortable with it. It was professionally frustrating for everybody who had worked really hard and then for the talk of the whole thing to be the shirt.”
Even before the show, Ye is said to have unsettled employees by calling skinheads and Nazis his “greatest inspiration” while going through designs for the collection, according to one former Yeezy staffer who was in the room.
A number of other former employees and collaborators have come forward with similar accusations in recent weeks. One ex-worker reportedly received a settlement from Kanye after he praised Adolf Hitler and Nazis during company meetings.
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Elsewhere in the piece, Rolling Stone uncovered the brutal 12 to 15-hour working days at Yeezy, as well as a culture of uncertainty around random and abrupt firings, late payments to employees and Kanye West’s eccentric, on-the-fly demands.
Multiple former staffers described a sycophantic environment where “yes men” thrive. “You have to constantly agree with him and it’s hard,” one said. “It’s hard to work that way.”
