This week, Kanye West gave a lecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago , where he also receive an honorary doctorate. During the speech, Mr. West also had plenty to say about his current deal with Adidas and past collaboration with Nike.
Yeezy used his platform to take direct shots at Nike (who wanted to pay him $4 Million more but he turned that down), which he had previously released two shoe lines with the athletic brand.
“And I still left them, because they weren’t giving me the opportunity to grow. They were working off an old business model, and Phil Knight was somewhere on an island,” he said. “And then, Mark Parker would go and find people who I collaborated with years before, and try to do collaborations with them to seem cool, and as you see, Nike hasn’t done like, one cool thing this year.”
He also spoke about his current collaboration with Adidas: “So when it was time to do the Adidas collection, and I left Nike because they refused to give me a percentage because I was not an athlete—I don’t have a NDA that says I can’t say this even though it seems wrong to say out loud—I left Nike because they refused to give me a percentage, they also offered me $4 million a year to stay, which is an unknown thing but I’m sure it’ll show up on Hypebeast tomorrow.”
Kanye then went on to praise his Adidas sneaker even more and why he has worn them everyday. “These are just adidas that are fresh, they’re not even my shoes. I don’t even get paid to wear ’em.”
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