It’s safe to say that whatever Kanye touches will turn to gold. Upon his arrival to Adidas, and with the release of the Yeezy 750 and 350, Ye brought a newfound, and much needed, boost in popularity and revenue to Adidas who was getting beat by Nike and Air Jordan. The same can be said for the GAP who was in turmoil before their partnership with Kanye’s Yeezy brand.
While Kanye has the ability to leverage his influence to help these companies, he has also been asking for more than just a partnership, but a seat at the table. He has called out the Adidas CEO multiple times for not putting him on the Adidas board despite having some of the most popular and highest selling shoes in the world. Ye is now doing the same with GAP, asking executives take this partnership more seriously and hear him out about the ideas he has for the future of the brand.
In a video shared to his IG today, August 31, Ye spoke to GAP executives, seemingly in a Yeezy Gap X Balenciaga creative studio, where he gave an impassioned 6-minute speech where he explained his mission for the Yeezy GAP brand.
“You have to really give me the position to be Ye and do what I’m thinking or I’m going to have to do what I’m thinking somewhere else. Because if there’s one thing I learned from Virgil, if something’s killing you, it’s actually killing you,” Ye said. He then called out GAP executives for canceling the pre-order for the blue Round Jacket, and only running the perfect hoodie ad once despite selling over $10 million of the hoodie during its initial release.
“This is the moment. There will never be an opportunity with a guy like me that cares this much about specifically this brand and has done this until this point,” Kanye continued. We are like Tom Brady waking people up at 2 am during COVID but he went back and got that ring,” he said. “We are the football team. This is our football team. And I’m actually the Tom Brady because Demna charge $4000 for a shirt.. I’m saying… how do we go Costco, how do we go Old Navy prices?”
Ye then gave an ultimatum to the exectives, saying that either they can let him do what he is thinking at the GAP, or he will find somewhere else to do it.
“This is bigger than us. We shouldn’t argue amongst ourselves. But I’m saying I have to go pull that sword out the stone,” he added. “You either believe me or I’m going to show you. I can either show you facing this way [back facing the executives] or facing this way [frontward],”
This comes after Ye publicly called out GAP for ripping his designs and canceling a photoshoot with his kids without letting him know.
You can watch Ye’s full speech here.
