Ye Blasts Adidas & Calls His Former Collaborator Jerry Lorenzo ‘Corny’ for Working With Apparel Giant
Ye — formerly Kanye West — had laid low for the first week of 2025 in his return to social media, but that changed on Tuesday night (Jan. 7), when he called out his former partner Adidas while attacking the company’s alleged search engine practices, and also took issue with designer Jerry Lorenzo in an Instagram post.
West believes when fans search for Yeezy on Google that Adidas is the first to come up before his own website, which he thinks is done intentionally to hurt his brand even though the apparel giant severed ties with him in 2022 over his repeated antisemitic remarks.
More from Billboard
“When you google Yeezy.com the adidas site comes before the Yeezy site Members at adidas Stop doing this Stop doing your moves to hold me back Our partnership is done You’re a 60 billion dollar company that froze my accounts,” he wrote alongside a screenshot of his search results. (When Billboard did a Google search for “yeezy,” Adidas does come up as the first result, but a search for “yeezy.com” has the Yeezy website coming up as the top result.) “Now I’m back on my feet (no pun intended) and I’m not going to stand for this (no pun again) I did phenomenal work for you guys and because I stood up for myself yall tried to intimidate and oppress me everyone remembers I had major issues with adidas because of design theft and oppression before ‘the tweet.'”
Ye and Fear of God designer Lorenzo were close collaborators in the 2010s (they stopped working together in 2016), but the rapper criticized Lorenzo for continuing to work with Adidas. Fear of God teamed up with the company in 2020 for an athletic line, and the deal included the designer as creative director of Adidas Basketball.
“Y’all know Jerry was corny and disloyal for doing work with adidas after the way they handled things I still showed up to his show that was a copy of my Hollywood bowl show being the so called bigger man but I’m never doing that again for no one It’s Yeezy over everything,” Ye continued in his Instagram post of showing up to support Lorenzo at his 2023 Hollywood Bowl fashion show.
Billboard has reached out to Google for comment, as well as Adidas regarding Ye’s remarks about the the clothing company and Lorenzo.
For West, he’s done with the collaborations and those he believes are using him to create imitations of his work, as he’s “here to dominate as I always have.”
“Everyone that ever took a picture next to me that had their own clothing lines and agendas everyone knows they was acting like they were my friends to promote they weak ass fake Yeezy lines They never wanted to truly work for the king,” Ye added in his lengthy post. “They wanted to use the king Get paid more than they would get paid anywhere else be yes man and be happy for any time I didn’t accomplish what ‘we’ were working towards Now they banished NO MORE HUGS Yeezy over everything I’m not here as a platform for anyone else I am here to dominate as I always have.”
The Chicago native also said he’s sticking to his $20 price model for merchandise going forward, which he believes is “burning the game to the ground.”
After spending the first week of 2025 relaxing in the Maldives while celebrating wife Bianca Censori’s 30th birthday, it could be another busy year for Ye. He’s been teasing his Bully album, as snippets have hit social media. However, there’s still no firm release date for the project, which will serve as his Vultures 2 follow-up and first solo album since 2021’s Donda.
West and Adidas settled their longstanding litigation since the split in 2024. “Both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims,” Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden said on October’s quarterly earnings call, before adding that neither party would be paying in the settlement. “No one owes anybody anything anymore. So whatever was is history.”
Best of Billboard
Sign up for Billboard's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
